Submitting traces to the Archive

Description

A general description of the traffic trace (e.g., "one hour of all TCP traffic between the University of Southern California and the rest of the world"; "HTTP server logs for a departmental server").

Format

Trace format. Preferred formats are tcpdump for raw traces, and fixed-column ASCII for reduced traces (such as is produced by the sanitize and tcp-reduce scripts). Other binary formats are acceptable only if accompanied by a program that can read the format (this program should work on both little- and big- endian machines, and on machines with different word sizes).

Measurement

Measurement details. Dates and times spanned by the trace; number of packets / connections / whatever; the measurement point (e.g., "DMZ network"; "HTTP server"); capture tool and hardware; loss/outage information; timestamp resolution; geographic location; time zone. Any known measurement artifacts.

Privacy

Security and privacy concerns. In general, traces should be modified as necessary to preserve the privacy and security of network users. For example, for packet traces this usually involves stripping out any keystrokes and perhaps all of the user data. It may also include renumbering hosts or stripping IP addresses to the network level, or mapping HTTP requests to unique, opaque identifies.

Archive contributors may find the archive's sanitize scripts useful for reducing tcpdump traces for these purposes.

Acknowledgements

Who captured the trace, how the trace should be acknowledged in publications, who to contact with questions regarding the trace.

Publications

Publications available that have already studied this trace, if any.

Related

Available related software and traces, if any.

Restrictions

Whether the trace may be redistributed without permission, who to contact for permission.
All traces in the archive are unrestricted as to what use may be made of them (for example, there is no requirement that simulations made using the traces be published in the open literature).