We regularly perform large-scale Internet measurements to obtain an up-to-date picture of the current Internet development. Specifically, we are interested in the adoption and usage of (new) communication protocols. Our studies help researchers to understand and improve the performance and security of the Internet.
Our Internet measurements either rely on scans of the entire IPv4 address space, or a part of the domain space. Every public IP address receives a handful of packets per week. Depending on the protocol we’re scanning we select a specific port. On this port we perform regular connection attempts followed by specification-compliant handshakes. For all of our studies, we consider ethical guidelines and especially never attempt to exploit security problems or change a device’s configuration. We only receive data that is easily available to anyone who connects to a particular address and port.
Our measurements already led to a variety of publications where we and our alumnis published our and their research results. While our research originally focussed on (and still comprises) the core of the Internet and the Web, we recently extended our research towards Internet-reachable industrial deployments. Here is an excerpt of our publications based on our Internet measurements (see below).
We regularly offer student theses in the area of Internet measurements. If you have interest in a thesis have a look at our available thesis topics and contact Constantin Sander or Markus Dahlmanns.
Our measurement infrastructure was originally set up by alumni researchers. Torsten Zimmermann, Jan Rüth, Jens Hiller, and Oliver Hohlfeld started analyzing the Internet in 2015 under the brand of netray.io Internet Observatory.