IP Route Survey (IPRS)#

IPRS is an initiative to continuously monitor IP-level routing across the internet. This is done through the regular collection of traceroute-style measurements that are launched from multiple vantage points towards a significant portion of the internet’s routable address blocks. The survey is conducted by the Dioptra research group at Sorbonne University’s LIP6 computer science laboratory.

As of December 2023, IPRS collects four daily IPv4 snapshots, each one featuring multipath route traces from ten vantage points, with each vantage point tracing towards 200,000 /24 prefixes. IPRS also collects one daily IPv6 snapshot with single-path route traces from the ten vantage points towards the /48 prefixes in the IPv6 hitlist.

For more information, visit the IPRS website: https://iprs.dioptra.io/

Accessing and citing M-Lab’s Sorbonne IPRS Data#

M-Lab hosts IPRS data on BigQuery in the mlab-collaboration.sorbonne data set.

This contains two tables: iprs_index1 for metadata, and iprs_data1 for the route traces. If clicking on these links does not bring you to the tables, we encourage you to contact the M-Lab team for help in accessing them.

Please cite this data set as follows: M-Lab’s Sorbonne IPRS Data Set, <date range used>. https://measurementlab.net/tests/iprs

At this time, all new IPv4 snapshots are being published via M-Lab, whereas IPv6 snapshots are not. The publication status of each snapshot is indicated in the metadata, as described below. If you wish to obtain IPRS data that is not hosted by M-Lab, or if you would like to receive data in another format, you are invited to contact the Dioptra group.

Metadata#

The metadata in the iprs_index1 table includes, for each snapshot:

• the snapshot’s unique identifier, or UUID
• its date and time
• whether it is published via M-Lab (if not, it can be obtained upon request from the Dioptra group)
• whether it contains IPv4 data, IPv6 data, or both
• additional metadata concerning the software versions that were used to obtain the snapshot, and their configuration

Metadata schema#

Data#

The route trace data is in the iprs_data1 table. It is provided in a schema called iprs1 that is purposely compatible with the scamper1 schema. The scamper1 schema is used for M-Lab’s extensive existing Traceroute data set, and iprs1 is designed to ease users’ ability to conduct queries across tables from both data sets.

There are nonethless differences between iprs1 and scamper1:

• An iprs1 route trace is not towards a single destination address, but towards a destination prefix (currently, for IPv4, a /24 prefix)

• iprs1’s id field allows IPRS data to be selected by snapshot, as indicated in the iprs_index1 table.

• For the following data types that call for an integer value, iprs1 uses the INTEGER data type whereas scamper1 uses FLOAT:

  • raw.CycleStart.ID
  • raw.CycleStart.start_time
  • raw.Tracelb.userid
  • raw.Tracelb.probe_size
  • raw.Tracelb.firsthop
  • raw.Tracelb.attempts
  • raw.Tracelb.confidence
  • raw.Tracelb.tos
  • raw.Tracelb.gaplimit
  • raw.Tracelb.wait_timeout
  • raw.Tracelb.wait_probe
  • raw.Tracelb.probec
  • raw.Tracelb.probec_max
  • raw.Tracelb.nodec
  • raw.Tracelb.linkc
  • raw.CycleStop.ID
  • raw.CycleStop.stop_time

• The following fields do not apply to IPRS data and are therefore left as NULL:

  • parser.Version
  • parser.Time
  • parser.ArchiveURL
  • parser.Filename
  • parser.Priority
  • parser.GitCommit
  • raw.Metadata.TracerouteCallerVersion
  • raw.Metadata.CachedResult
  • raw.Metadata.CachedUUID
  • raw.CycleStart.ID
  • raw.Tracelb.version
  • raw.Tracelb.userid
  • raw.Tracelb.start.Usec
  • raw.Tracelb.probe_size
  • raw.Tracelb.tos
  • raw.Tracelb.gaplimit
  • raw.Tracelb.wait_timeout
  • raw.Tracelb.wait_probe
  • raw.Tracelb.probec
  • raw.Tracelb.probec_max
  • raw.Tracelb.nodes.name
  • raw.Tracelb.nodes.q_ttl
  • raw.Tracelb.nodes.links.Links.Probes.Tx.Sec
  • raw.Tracelb.nodes.links.Links.Probes.Tx.Usec
  • raw.Tracelb.nodes.links.Links.Probes.Replies.Rx.Sec
  • raw.Tracelb.nodes.links.Links.Probes.Replies.Rx.Usec
  • raw.Tracelb.nodes.links.Links.Probes.Replies.icmp_q_tos
  • raw.CycleStop.ID

• iprs1 links do not include unresponsive hosts

• In the case of a rare phenomenon that we term amplification (one probe receiving more than one reply), only one reply is retained, while raw.Tracelb.nodes.links.Links.Probes.Replyc indicates the total number of replies the probe received from this address.

Data schema#

Example queries#

The following query provides an overview of metadata for snapshots that have been published:

SELECT *
FROM `mlab-collaboration.sorbonne.iprs_index1`
WHERE is_published = true;

The following query fetches records from the iprs_data1 table, but only for snapshots that meet specific criteria in the iprs_index1 table.

Filtering Criteria:

• Timeframe: Includes snapshots taken in March 2025.
• Duration: Includes only snapshots lasting less than 2 hours.

SELECT *
FROM `mlab-collaboration.sorbonne.iprs_data1`
WHERE id IN (
  SELECT id
  FROM `mlab-collaboration.sorbonne.iprs_index1`
  WHERE start_time BETWEEN "2025-03-01" AND "2025-03-30"
    AND duration < 7200
);