Network Telescope

Network telescopes collect and record unsolicited Internet-wide traffic destined to a routed but unused address space usually referred to as “Darknet” or “blackhole” address space. Among the largest network telescopes in the US, Merit Network operates one that receives unsolicited internet traffic on around 475k unused IP addresses. On an average day, the network telescope receives approximately 41.5k packets per second and around 17M bits per second. Description of the attached dataset:

1. Data Source:

The origin of the data is a Network Telescope, a system used to collect unsolicited internet traffic for analysis, often related to malicious activities or misconfigurations.

2. Collection Site:

The data was collected at Merit Network, Inc., a nonprofit organization associated with the University of Michigan.

3. Collection Period:

The data was gathered over a specific timeframe, from August 11 to August 17, 2024, giving a week's worth of observations. 

4. Data Volume:

The total size of the dataset is 554 GB, indicating a substantial amount of network traffic captured during the collection period.

5. Annotation Method:

The data was processed using a custom Rust-based script, which was used for parsing, annotating, and labeling the traffic data. This ensures the data is categorized appropriately for further analysis.

6. Output Format:

The processed data is saved in a CSV format, including TCP flags and an event type label, providing structured information for researchers to analyze traffic behavior effectively.