LOBSTER: Large-scale Monitoring of Broadband Internet Infrastructures

Description
As networks get faster and network-centric applications get more complex, our understanding of the Internet continues to diminish. New aspects of Internet behaviour emerge that are either unknown or poorly understood. Denial-of-service attacks, malicious self-replicating programs (worms) and viruses plague the Internet. All these indicate the need for better Internet traffic monitoring. Network monitoring and measurement is increasingly regarded as an essential function for developing and supporting high-quality network services, building and improving innovative networking technologies, analyzing infrastracture trends and user behavior and improving the security of our cyber-infrastracture. LOBSTER is a step towards providing an advanced pilot European passive Internet traffic monitoring infrastracture that will improve our understanding of the Internet and will contribute towards solving difficult performance and security problems. Based on appropriate abstractions and willing cooperation among points of presence, this proposal will contribute towards effectively monitoring the underlying network, providing early warning for security incidents, and providing accurate and meaningful measurements of performance. The main goal of LOBSTER is to deploy an advanced pilot European Internet Traffic Monitoring Infrastracture based on passive monitoring sensors at speeds starting from 2.5 Gbps and possibly up to 10 Gbps. It also aims to develop appropriate data anonymising tools to prohibit unauthorised tampering with the original traffic data, and to develop novel applications to improve monitoring (such as traffic characterisation and zero-day worm spread detection). Another aspect will be to provide anonymised traffic data to interested network researchers and security analysts.

Duration
Since october 2006

More Info
Project Website: http://www.ist-lobster.org/
Lobster sensors:
http://lobster.ics.forth.gr/~appmon/
CCABA monitor:
http://loadshedding.ccaba.upc.edu/