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DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.25

Five Blind Men and the Internet: Towards an Understanding of Internet Traffic

Authors: Ege Cem Kirci, Ayush Mishra, and Laurent Vanbever

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 139, 1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026)

Abstract

Our current view of traffic on the Internet - the world’s largest and most pervasive network - comes from a variety of perspectives, each with its own blind spots and biases. In this paper, we make the case for using publicly available Internet exchange point (IXP) statistics as a complementary vantage point. While IXP data has its own limitations, it is fine-grained, accessible, and independently verifiable - offering a distinct perspective on Internet usage patterns. We present results from a two-year study (2023-2024) of 472 IXPs worldwide, capturing approximately 300 Tbps of peak daily aggregate traffic by late 2024. Over this period, aggregate IXP traffic increased by 49.2% (24.5% annualized), with regionally distinct diurnal patterns and event-driven anomalies. These results provide an accessible framework for researchers and operators to study the Internet’s evolving ecosystem from an IXP-based perspective, and lay the groundwork for systematic, global-scale detection of network anomalies and outages.

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Ege Cem Kirci, Ayush Mishra, and Laurent Vanbever. Five Blind Men and the Internet: Towards an Understanding of Internet Traffic. In 1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 139, pp. 25:1-25:26, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{kirci_et_al:OASIcs.NINeS.2026.25,
  author =	{Kirci, Ege Cem and Mishra, Ayush and Vanbever, Laurent},
  title =	{{Five Blind Men and the Internet: Towards an Understanding of Internet Traffic}},
  booktitle =	{1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026)},
  pages =	{25:1--25:26},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-414-7},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{139},
  editor =	{Argyraki, Katerina and Panda, Aurojit},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.25},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-256106},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.25},
  annote =	{Keywords: Internet Exchange Point (IXP), traffic measurement, longitudinal study, traffic growth, diurnal patterns, PeeringDB, global-scale detection, network anomalies}
}

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Five Blind Men and the Internet: Towards an Understanding of Internet Traffic

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