CRAWDAD pdx/vwave (v. 2007-08-13)

Dataset of wireless LAN traffic around Portland, Oregon using a commercial sniffer VWave.

We collected six wireless LAN traffic traces around Portland, Oregon using a commercial sniffer VWave which has a nano-second time resolution.

last modified :

2007-08-29

release date :

2007-08-13

date/time of measurement start :

2006-06-12

date/time of measurement end :

2006-07-24

collection environment :

Analysis of the MAC-level behavior of WLANs is required in order to better
deploy and design future systems. To this end, collection and analysis of 
traffic traces is an important task. We collected six traffic traces 
around Portland, Oregon using a commercial sniffer VWave which has a nano-second 
time resolution, and conduct an analysis of fine time scale (second or fraction 
of a second) packet, flow, and error characteristics of these networks.

network configuration :

We collected data at six different locations of which three 
(first three below) were located on-campus and three off-campus:
- PSU (Portland State University) CS Department Near Faculty Offices in Networking Closet
- PSU Library, 3rd Floor
- PSU Cafeteria
- Office overlooking ``Pioneer Square'' from the second floor
- Urban Grind Coffee 
- Worldcup Coffee at Powell's Books

data collection methodology :

These traces were collected using a VeriWave WT20 Appliance which was 
kindly loaned to us by the folks at VeriWave (http://www.veriwave.com). 
The WT20 hardware consists of two 802.11 reference radios, real-time 
linux, and two processors. The WT20 provides nanosecond resolution 
timestamps and it logs the time when it began seeing a frame and 
the time when the frame finished arriving.

sanitization :

We used the anonymization tool developed by David Kotz et al.
for santizing the CRAWDAD/Dartmouth traces. It is based on the
prefix-preserving anonymization scheme presented in:
  
  Xu, J., Fan, J. Ammar, M., and Moon, S. 2002. ``On the Design and
  Performance of Prefix-Preserving IP Traffic Trace Anonymization'',
  Proc. of 10th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP
  2002), Paris, France, November 2002.
  http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~jx/reprints/ICNP02A.pdf

More recent publications (V. Paxson 2006) have shown that there
are still attacks possible with this level of anonymization. 
We have chosen to anonimize the traces as much as possible without losing
the most interesting features. Our expectation is that the remaining
information that could be extracted with such an attack is
uninteresting enough to bore most attackers. Moreover, all
traces were collected on unencrypted networks in public locations
and with the permission of the network-operators - users of such
networks should have low expectations for the privacy of their
traffic to begin with.

We:
  * Anonymized the IPs, in a prefix-preserving way
  * Anonymized the MACs, keeping the OUI identifiers intact
  * Stripped everything after the TCP/UDP header

limitation :

We face two challenges in data collection: The first is placement of
the VWave sniffer. Because it has a lower effective receiver sensitivity
than most access points today (-75dBm versus -90dBm), we must prevent a
large possible packet loss with careful antenna choice and placement. 
The second problem is practical -- we had to obtain permission from 
the three merchants and further needed to ensure that our equipment 
was as unobtrusive as possible so as not to affect the ``normal'' behavior
of the users.

Traceset

pdx/vwave/wlan_pcap

Traceset of wireless LAN traffic around Portland, Oregon using a commercial sniffer VWave.

• files: 2006_06_12_psu_cs.cap.gz, 2006_07_10_library.cap.gz, 2006_07_10_cafe.cap.gz, 2006_06_26_pioneer.cap.gz, 2006_07_20_ug.cap.gz, 2006_07_24_powells.cap.gz
• description: Traceset of six wireless LAN traffic traces around Portland, Oregon, collected using a commercial sniffer VWave which has a nano-second time resolution.
• measurement purpose: Usage Characterization
• methodology: The WT20 hardware consists of two 802.11 reference radios, real-time linux, and two processors. The WT20 provides nanosecond resolution timestamps and it logs the time when it began seeing a frame and the time when the frame finished arriving. We are using Veriwave WT20 in a somewhat novel way. It listens with two radios simultaneously on the same channel, recording frames to a per-radio, 256 MB, ring-buffer. The WT20's firmware will discard any frames received with a signal less than -75 dBm, but the rest (Data and Management, but not Control) are logged without any scrubbing. A tclsh script, running on a laptop connected to the WT20 (via ethernet), grabs the contents of this ring-buffer from each radio in-turn, every 10 seconds. This data is dumped as a VWR file, a proprietary Veriwave file format, and then converted to a libpcap file on the fly. At the end of a 4 hour capture we have 1440 files which are stitched together using a program we have developed for this purpose (after finding that existing tools like mergecap and tcpslice either contained bugs or didn't work with 802.11 traces).
• last modified: 2007-08-29
• dataname: pdx/vwave/wlan_pcap
• version: 20070813
• change: the initial version
• release date: 2007-08-13
• date/time of measurement start: 2006-06-12
• date/time of measurement end: 2006-07-24
• network type: 802.11 infrastructure

pdx/vwave/wlan_pcap Traces

• psu-cs: Wireless LAN traffic trace collected from PSU (Portland State University) CS Department.

• configuration: Where: PSU (Portland State University) CS Department Near Faculty Offices in Networking Closet Duration: 1 Hour (1500 - 1600), Monday Description: The capture antennas were placed at the same level and immediately in front of the access-point antennas. The closest clients are at least one wall away. We used this site for prototyping our capture methodologies.
• format: tcpdump (pcap) format
• description: Wireless LAN traffic trace collected from PSU (Portland State University) CS Department.
• last modified: 2007-08-29
• dataname: pdx/vwave/wlan_pcap/psu-cs
• version: 20070813
• change: the initial version
• release date: 2007-08-13
• date/time of measurement start: 2006-06-12
• date/time of measurement end: 2006-06-12
• url: /download/pdx/vwave/wlan_pcap/2006_06_12_psu_cs.cap.gz

• library: Wireless LAN traffic trace collected from PSU (Portland State University) Library.

• configuration: Where: PSU (Portland State University) Library, 3rd Floor Duration: 4 Hours (1400 - 1800), Monday Description: Each library floor is covered by at least three access-points. We positioned our capture antenna on a table, about 4 feet away from the access-point antenna (ceiling mounted) and with roughly the same vantage.
• format: tcpdump (pcap) format
• description: Wireless LAN traffic trace collected from PSU (Portland State University) Library.
• last modified: 2007-08-29
• dataname: pdx/vwave/wlan_pcap/library
• version: 20070813
• change: the initial version
• release date: 2007-08-13
• date/time of measurement start: 2006-07-10
• date/time of measurement end: 2006-07-10
• url: /download/pdx/vwave/wlan_pcap/2006_07_10_library.cap.gz

• cafeteria: Wireless LAN traffic trace collected from PSU (Portland State University) Cafeteria.

• configuration: Where: PSU (Portland State University) Cafeteria Duration: 4 Hours (0930 - 1330), Monday Description: For this capture we placed our capture antenna directly under a sector antenna which serves the cafeteria. The room is mostly free of impediments, providing line-of-sight to nearly all users.
• format: tcpdump (pcap) format
• description: Wireless LAN traffic trace collected from PSU (Portland State University) Cafeteria.
• last modified: 2007-08-29
• dataname: pdx/vwave/wlan_pcap/cafeteria
• version: 20070813
• change: the initial version
• release date: 2007-08-13
• date/time of measurement start: 2006-07-10
• date/time of measurement end: 2006-07-10
• url: /download/pdx/vwave/wlan_pcap/2006_07_10_cafe.cap.gz

• pioneer-sq: Wireless LAN traffic trace collected from a large outdoor area in downtown Portland.

• configuration: Where: Office overlooking ``Pioneer Square'' from the second floor Duration: 4 Hours (1130 - 1530), Monday Description: This location serves Pioneer Square, a large common outdoor area in downtown Portland, and surrounding coffee-shops and businesses. We setup the VeriWave WT20's antenna to the side of the access-point antenna, in a neighboring room. One wall and about 5 feet separated the capture antenna from the access-point antenna.
• format: tcpdump (pcap) format
• description: Wireless LAN traffic trace collected from a large outdoor area in downtown Portland.
• last modified: 2007-08-29
• dataname: pdx/vwave/wlan_pcap/pioneer-sq
• version: 20070813
• change: the initial version
• release date: 2007-08-13
• date/time of measurement start: 2006-06-26
• date/time of measurement end: 2006-06-26
• url: /download/pdx/vwave/wlan_pcap/2006_06_26_pioneer.cap.gz

• urban-grind: Wireless LAN traffic trace collected from a coffee shop in Portland.

• configuration: Where: Urban Grind Coffee Duration: 2 Hours (1300 - 1500), Thursday Description: The Urban Grind is a popular coffee-shop in Portland for laptop-users, and gets as much or more laptop-traffic then any other coffee-shop in Portland. This space, like the cafeteria, has very few impediments - both the access-point and the capture antenna have line of sight to nearly every client device. The capture antenna was placed approximately 10 feet from the ceiling-mounted access point.
• format: tcpdump (pcap) format
• description: Wireless LAN traffic trace collected from a coffee shop in Portland.
• last modified: 2007-08-29
• dataname: pdx/vwave/wlan_pcap/urban-grind
• version: 20070813
• change: the initial version
• release date: 2007-08-13
• date/time of measurement start: 2006-07-20
• date/time of measurement end: 2006-07-20
• url: /download/pdx/vwave/wlan_pcap/2006_07_20_ug.cap.gz

• powells: Wireless LAN traffic trace collected from a coffee shop at a bookstore in Portland.

• configuration: Where: Worldcup Coffee at Powell's Books Duration: 4 Hours (1030 - 1430), Monday Description: The coffee shop at Powells sees a typical, slow but steady stream of laptop users. Aside from a couple of book-cases, it is a mostly open space. We positioned our capture antenna on a bookshelf approximately 8 feet above the ground to have good line-of-site to the access-point and the laptop-using patrons.
• format: tcpdump (pcap) format
• description: Wireless LAN traffic trace collected from a coffee shop at a bookstore in Portland.
• last modified: 2007-08-29
• dataname: pdx/vwave/wlan_pcap/powells
• version: 20070813
• change: the initial version
• release date: 2007-08-13
• date/time of measurement start: 2006-07-24
• date/time of measurement end: 2006-07-24
• url: /download/pdx/vwave/wlan_pcap/2006_07_24_powells.cap.gz