The CAIDA Anonymized Internet Traces Dataset

CAIDA routinely collects traces on several backbone OC192 links: equinix-chicago (since April 2008) and equinix-sanjose (since July 2008). These monthly traces of one hour each are provided to interested researchers on request in pcap files containing payload-stripped, anonymized traffic organized in the annual datasets listed below.

Mainly driven by cost and size issues for disk storage, a decision was made in summer 2010 to reorganize the passive trace datasets on a quarterly schedule: each quarter the best of the three monthly traces is selected; each year only the four selected traces for each quarter are included in the online datasets. For the omitted traces only metadata are retained. These primarily include statistical information, and a breakdown in flow and protocol characteristics.

Acceptable Use Agreement

Please read the terms of the CAIDA Acceptable Use Agreement (AUA) for Publicy Accessible Datasets below:

When referencing this data (as required by the AUA), please use:

The CAIDA UCSD Statistical information for the CAIDA Anonymized Internet Traces,
https://www.caida.org/data/passive/passive_trace_statistics

You are required to report your publications using this dataset to CAIDA.

Statistics for monthly traces

This table provides a summary of statistics for all traces. The columns shows are from left to right:

• Monitor
• Year and month (including a link to a graphical display of breakup by protocol, application and country)
• Start time of trace (UTC)
• Stop time of trace (UTC)
• Number of IPv4 packets
• Number of IPv6 packets
• Unknown packets (as fraction of total number of packets)
• Transmission rate in packets per second
• Transmission rate in bits per second
• Link load (as fraction of nominal maximum load for an OC192 link (9.953×10⁹ bits/s)
• Average packet size (bytes) (including a link to a graph of the packet size distribution)

Anonymized Internet Traces Datasets

Restricted Datasets (available through CAIDA)

• Anonymized Internet Traces Dataset (April 2008 - January 2019)
• Anonymized Internet Traces on IPv6 Day and IPv6 Launch Day Dataset
• Anonymized Industry Evaluation Internet Traces Dataset

Publicly Available Datasets

• Summary statistical information for all anonymized internet traces
• Anonymized OC48 Peering Point Traces Dataset

The Data Collection Monitors

• equinix-chicago monitor
• equinix-sanjose monitor
• equinix-nyc monitor