Reference:
In the 4th Workshop on Hot Topics in Networking (HOTNETS-IV).
Abstract:
While network measurement techniques are continually improving,
representative network measurements are increasingly scarce. The issue
is fundamentally one of access: either the points of interest are hidden, are
unwilling, or are sufficiently many that representative analysis is daunting if
not unattainable. In particular, much of the Internet's modern growth, in both
size and complexity, is ``protected'' by NAT and firewall technologies that
preclude the use of traditional measurement techniques. Thus, while we can
see the shrinking visible portion of the Internet with ever-greater fidelity,
the majority of the Internet remains invisible. We argue for a new approach to
illuminate these hidden regions of the Internet: opportunistic
measurement that leverages sources of ``spurious'' network traffic such as
worms, misconfigurations, spam floods, and malicious automated scans. We
identify a number of such sources and demonstrate their potential to provide
measurement data at a far greater scale and scope than modern research sources.
Most importantly, these sources provide insight into portions of the network
unseen using traditional measurement approaches. Finally, we discuss the
challenges of bias and noise that accompany any use of spurious
network traffic.
Full paper: [ps] [pdf] [Bibtex Entry]