An access queue
You reach the address and instead of a market you get a waiting room with a number on it. Nothing has gone wrong. This is one of the few screens in the collection that is doing you a favour.
- What it is
- A holding page that admits visitors at a controlled rate
- Where you meet it
- Immediately after an address opens, before any login
- What it settles
- Nothing about authenticity. A queue is as copyable as any page
- Cannot tell you
- How long you will actually wait, whatever number it shows
The specimen
You are in line. position 1 4 2 7
Please keep this page open. Do not refresh.
this page will move you forward on its own
The shape of a queue page. The number is a position, not a countdown, and the line asking you not to refresh is the only instruction on the page that costs you something to ignore.
Why a queue exists at all
A hidden service has no way to see who is knocking. There is no address to rate limit, no country to filter, no account until somebody logs in. Every connection looks identical to every other one, which makes ordinary flood protection impossible.
A queue sidesteps that by controlling admission instead of identity. Everyone waits, everyone advances, and the load on the thing behind the door stays inside what it can serve. It is the crudest possible answer and it is also close to the only one available.
Reading the number
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| A position that drops steadily | The queue is moving. Leave it alone |
| A position that jumps up | Either you reloaded, or the circuit dropped and you rejoined |
| A position that sits still for a long time | Usually the far end being slow, not you. Still leave it alone |
| A time estimate | Take it loosely. Nothing on this side can predict the other side |
What a queue does not mean
- Not proof you are in the right place. A waiting room is a page and copies fine.
- Not proof anything is wrong. Queues run on ordinary days as well as bad ones.
- Not a reason to go looking for another address. That is the moment somebody helpful appears with one, and the timing is the point.
The right move while waiting is nothing. If you want to spend the time usefully, use it to check that the address you are queueing on matches the one in your own file, because that is the check you skipped to get here.
What to do with the wait
Use it on the check you skipped. Compare the address you are queueing on against the copy in your own file, and if you do not have a file, this is the moment to start one. It costs nothing, the page is holding your place anyway, and it converts dead time into the one step that would have answered the question you are about to ask when the login form appears.