Network telescope

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Template:Short description A network telescope (also known as a packet telescope,[1] darknet, Internet motion sensor or black hole)[2][3][4] is an Internet system that allows one to observe different large-scale events taking place on the Internet. The basic idea is to observe traffic targeting the dark (unused) address-space of the network. Since all traffic to these addresses is suspicious, one can gain information about possible network attacks (random scanning worms, and DDoS backscatter) as well as other misconfigurations by observing it.

The resolution of the Internet telescope is dependent on the number of IP addresses it monitors. For example, a large Internet telescope that monitors traffic to 16,777,216 addresses (the Template:IPaddr Internet telescope in IPv4), has a higher probability of observing a relatively small event than a smaller telescope that monitors 65,536 addresses (a Template:IPaddr Internet telescope).

The naming comes from an analogy to optical telescopes, where a larger physical size allows more photons to be observed.[5]

A variant of a network telescope is a sparse darknet, or greynet, consisting of a region of IP address space that is sparsely populated with "darknet" addresses interspersed with active (or "lit") IP addresses.[2] These include a greynet assembled from 210,000 unused IP addresses mainly located in Japan.[6]

Large network telescope instances

Network Coverage IPs Name Life span Captures
Template:IPaddr 100%[3] ~16M APNIC 2010-02-23 (1 week) 4.1 terabyte[3]
Template:IPaddr 99%[4] ~16M UCSD Network TelescopeTemplate:Notetag 2001-02-01‒2017-12-31 3.25 petabyte[7]
2018-01-01‒2019-06-04
74% ~12M 2019-06-05—
Template:IPaddr 67%[4] ~11M Merit NetworkTemplate:Notetag 2005-10-05— 18.2 terabyte[8]
Template:IPaddr 100%[3] ~16M ARIN 2010-03-12 (1 week) 1.1 terabyte[3]
Template:IPaddr 100%[3] ~16M ARIN 2010-03-25 (1 week) 1.2 terabyte[3]
1,300 networks Akamai[9] / MIT[10] 2009/2019—
Template:IPaddr 100% 65k HEAnet[11] 2019-03 (1 week) 96 gigabyte[11]
Template:IPaddr 100% ~130k SURFnet[12]
Template:IPaddr (IPv6) 100% 8.3 billion trillion trillion (2^112) RIPE NCC[13] 2020-01-13 – 2020-01-16 (3 days) 19M packets

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See also

References

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Further reading

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