CAIDA’s Annual Report for 2014
July 22nd, 2015 by kc[Executive Summary from our annual report for 2014:]
This annual report covers CAIDA’s activities in 2014, summarizing highlights from our research, infrastructure, data-sharing and outreach activities. Our research projects span Internet topology, routing, traffic, security and stability, future Internet architecture, economics and policy. Our infrastructure activities support measurement-based Internet studies, both at CAIDA and around the world, with focus on the health and integrity of the global Internet ecosystem.
Mapping the Internet. We continued to collect and share the largest Internet topology data sets (IPv4 and IPv6) available to academic researchers. We published four new research studies of how to more accurately infer topology, geolocation, and complex routing relationships from traceroute and BGP data, and three new studies on interdomain routing behavior. We also curate and share many aggregated derivative data sets, integrating strategic Internet measurement and data analysis capabilities to provide comprehensive annotated Internet topology maps that will improve our collective ability to identify, monitor, and model critical cyberinfrastructure. We released our eighth and ninth Internet Topology Data Kits (ITDK), which curated measurements taken in April and November 2014, respectively. We also published two studies on using passive measurement data to improve the inference of IPv4 address space utilization and a a study that detected network tarpits (hosts that masquerade as many fake hosts on a network) and assessed their impact on measurement surveys based on active measurements.
Mapping Interconnection Connectivity and Congestion. In a newly NSF-funded project, we built on our detailed understanding of and capability to measure and infer Internet interdomain topology to investigate a loudly debated issue in public policy: congestion at interconnection points. We published analyses of our initial results in both the flagship Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) and the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC), as well as participated in panels in D.C. to educate policymakers on how measurement can inform Internet policy development.
Future Internet Architectures. We expanded our involvement in the Named Data Networking project, a global collaboration exploring a generalization of the Internet architecture that allows naming not just the endpoints, i.e., source and destination IP addresses, but rather the data (content) itself. By naming data instead of locations, the new architecture transforms data into a first-class entity while addressing several known technical challenges of today’s Internet, including routing scalability, network security, content protection and privacy. We co-authored two high-level introductions for NDN — one technical and one focused on societal implications — and participated in NDN routing research, testbed operations, management duties, and provided web site support.
IPv6 Evolution. Our IPv6 research effort has enabled us to improve the fidelity, scope, and usability of IPv6 measurement technology. The resulting data sets have informed our understanding of how observed IPv6 use correlates with other technical and socioeconomic data: address allocation, available geographic and traffic data, ISP organizational structure (commercial, government, educational), and political/regulatory factors influencing IPv6 deployment.
Security and Stability. We published new and updated versions of studies analyzing large-scale Internet outages and new methods for analysis of darknet (telescope) data. We started the development of BGPStream, a software framework for efficiently processing live and historical BGP measurement data. We also started a new project funded by NSF to develop methodologies and infrastructure to detect BGP man-in-the-middle attacks.
Economics and Policy. We published a study of the industry standard for volume-based transit pricing and whether it makes sense today, a journal version of the platform economics paper we published last year, the policy-relevant interpretation of our interdomain congestion measurement study (TPRC paper mentioned above), and we began a new policy paper proposing an approach for more auspicious regulation of the co-evolving ICT ecosystem. We also submitted a comment to the FCC public comment period on its Open Internet regulation, entitled “Approaches to transparency aimed at minimizing harm and maximizing investment.”
We continued to expand the functionality of two traffic measurement infrastructures in response to research community needs, which enable us to share Internet backbone traffic data (anonymized) samples as well as real-time snapshots of traffic data shared from UCSD’s network telescope. We support three community-oriented projects to facilitate sharing of this and other Internet measurement data: (1) DHS’s Protected Repository for the Defense of Infrastructure Against Cyber Threats (PREDICT) to support protected sharing of security-related Internet data with researchers; (2) the Internet Measurement Data Catalog (DatCat), an index of information (metadata) about data sets and their availability under various usage policies. We published a draft survey of end-to-end mobile network measurement testbeds as a technical report while it undergoes peer review.
Finally, as always, we engaged in a variety of tool development, and outreach activities, including web sites, 24 peer-reviewed papers, 4 technical reports, 3 workshop reports, 21 presentations, 17 blog entries, and 6 workshops. Details of our activities are below. CAIDA’s program plan for 2014-2017 is available at http://www.caida.org/home/about/progplan/progplan2014/. Please do not hesitate to send comments or questions to info at caida dot org.
Full report at:
http://www.caida.org/home/about/annualreports/2014/