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Geolocating network devices is essential for various research areas. Yet, despite notable advancements, it continues to be one of the most challenging issues for experimentalists. An approach for geolocating that has proved effective is leveraging geolocating hints in PTR records associated with network devices. We argue that Large Language Models (LLMs), rather than humans, are better equipped to identify patterns in DNS PTR records, and significantly scale the coverage of tools like Hoiho. We introduce an approach that leverages LLMs to classify PTR records, and generate regular expressions for these classes, and hint-to-location mapping. We present preliminary results showing the applicability of using LLMs as a scalable approach to leverage PTR records for infrastructure geolocation. 

The Venezuelan crisis, unfolding over the past decade, has garnered international attention due to its impact on various sectors of civil society. While studies have extensively covered the crisis's effects on public health, energy, and water management, this paper delves into a previously unexplored area - the impact on Venezuela's Internet infrastructure. Amidst Venezuela's multifaceted challenges, understanding the repercussions of this critical aspect of modern society becomes imperative for the country's recovery. Leveraging measurements from various sources, we present a comprehensive view of the changes undergone by the Venezuelan network in the past decade. Our study reveals the significant impact of the crisis captured by different signals, including bandwidth stagnation, limited growth on network infrastructure growth, and high latency compared to the Latin American average. Beyond offering a new perspective on the Venezuelan crisis, our study can help inform attempts at devising strategies for its recovery. 

We present a longitudinal study of intercontinental long-haul links (LHL) - links with latencies significantly higher than that of all other links in a traceroute path. Our study is motivated by the recognition of these LHLs as a network-layer manifestation of transoceanic undersea cables. We present a methodology and associated processing system for identifying long-haul links in traceroute measurements, and report on our findings from. We apply this system to a large corpus of traceroute data and report on multiple aspects of long haul connectivity including country-level prevalence, routers as international gateways, preferred long-haul destinations, and the evolution of these characteristics over a 7 year period. 

On November 28-29, 2023, Northwestern University hosted a work- shop titled “Towards Re-architecting Today’s Internet for Surviv- ability” in Evanston, Illinois, US. The goal of the workshop was to bring together a group of national and international experts to sketch and start implementing a transformative research agenda for solving one of our community’s most challenging yet important tasks: the re-architecting of tomorrow’s Internet for “survivability”, ensuring that the network is able to fulfill its mission even in the presence of large-scale catastrophic events. This report provides a necessarily brief overview of two full days of active discussions. 

An organization-level topology of the Internet is a valuable resource with uses that range from the study of organizations’ footprints and Internet centralization trends, to analysis of the dynamics of the Internet’s corporate structures as result of (de)mergers and acquisitions. Current approaches to infer this topology rely exclusively on WHOIS databases and are thus impacted by its limitations, including errors and outdated data. We argue that a collaborative, operator-oriented database such as PeeringDB can bring a complementary perspective from the legally-bounded information available in WHOIS records. We present as2org+, a new framework that leverages self-reported information available on PeeringDB to boost the state-of-the-art WHOIS-based methodologies. We discuss the challenges and opportunities with using PeeringDB records for AS-to-organization mappings, present the design of as2org+ and demonstrate its value identifying companies operating in multiple continents and mergers and acquisitions over a five-year period.