Extending multi-cloud Internet background monitoring into China reveals regional activity

Split Skies: Operational Experiences Extending a Multi-Cloud Network Telescope into the Asia-Pacific

Networking and Internet Architecture

Summary

Measuring Internet Background Radiation (IBR), which is the random Internet traffic not directed at anyone, needs many different measurement points around the world. Previous studies mostly looked at providers in Western countries, which missed important activity in Asia-Pacific. The authors added a monitoring node on Tencent Cloud in China and found a lot of Internet scanning that wasn't visible from Western clouds. They also explain how politics and local rules make it hard to set up and manage such measurement points globally. Their work shows that understanding global Internet behavior requires many local collaborators because each country's rules and network setups affect what can be seen.

What this means in practice

  • For network security teams: Detect regional scanning activities invisible from Western cloud providers by deploying measurement nodes in Asia-Pacific cloud regions.
  • For internet infrastructure operators: Integrate multi-cloud measurements including Asia-Pacific nodes to improve transparency of global Internet traffic patterns affected by regional policies.

Authors

Nils Kempen, Benjamin Schumann, Ralph Holz

Abstract

Comprehensive visibility into Internet Background Radiation (IBR) requires diverse measurement infrastructure. Recent work showed that cloud IBR depends on the provider making single-provider telescopes systematically biased. These studies relied entirely on Western providers and left the Asia-Pacific region as a blind spot. In this report we extend a multi-cloud network telescope onto Tencent Cloud inside mainland China. We detail how Internet fragmentation, geo-politics, and provider rules complicate global measurement through strict onboarding barriers and an unreliable management plane. Once deployed, our nodes captured high-volume regional scanning invisible to our Western vantage points. We conclude by connecting our findings to the Responsible Internet framework. This framework relies on independent global observation to build a transparent Network Inspection Plane. We show that building this plane is bottlenecked by sovereign ecosystems and requires a collaborative community effort.
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