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Data Collect Request

  • From: pdmcdan
  • Date: Wed Feb 25 19:08:01 1998

To whom it may concern,

Dr. Sugih Jamin and myself (Patrick McDaniel) of the University of
Michigan are currently studying the load characteristics of a
potential Internet sized key distribution system.  Because of the
limited amount of these kinds of systems, we are using DNS traffic to
model the expected usage. To continue this study, we are in need of
DNS traffic traces collected from a wide range of networks. The purpose
of this post is to ask for your assistance in this effort.

We provide a script for collecting this data.  This script will:

  1) Automatically collect traces from the named process over a 24
     hour period.
  2) "Anonymize" all the data collected.  No domain or host names will 
     appear in the traces after they have been filtered by the
     downloaded script.  At your request, we will not divulge the
     source of the trace in any resulting publications.

We have submitted a initial version of the study to SIGCOMM 98'.  The
submission paper is available in at:

  http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~pdmcdan/docs/keyhier.ps.gz

The script used for collecting the data is available at:

  http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~pdmcdan/automated-dns

Instructions for script usage:

0. Login to the authoritative domain name server for your network.
   (note that you will need to perform this as root)

1. Copy the downloaded automated-dns script to the /var/tmp directory.

2. CD to /var/tmp

3. Run the script with the following arguments: 

automated-dns <boot file> <named pid> <output-file>

Where:

         boot file  : is boot file for DNS server
         named pid  : process ID of named
       output file  : file to output trace information

eg.

% automated-dns 517 ./dns-trace

4. The script will ask you to confirm the PID of the named process.

5. The script will ask for the signal numbers of the SIGUSER1 and
   SIGUSER2 signals for your system.  This information should be
   available on the man page for signal (section 7 on Linux, section 5 
   on SunOS 5.5.1, signals 16 and 17 are most likely correct)

6. The script should execute for 24 hours, then "anonymize" the trace
   and write results to the output file.

7. Email the output file or contact me to exchange the data.  Please
   include as much information as you can about the size and type of
   network on which the traces were collected.  My email address is:

   [email protected]

Thanks for your time.  If you have any questions, please feel free to
contact me through email.  If you run into any problems, I will be
more than happy to help.

Thanks,
Patrick McDaniel

----
Patrick McDaniel                            University of Michigan
Office : 3115 EECS Building                       [  \/  ]
Office Phone : (313) 647-3780                      ][\/][
Email : [email protected]                    [__][__]