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Co-authored-by: Maria Xynou <[email protected]>

content/post/IMC-hackathon-results-2023/index.md

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+---
+title: "Measure all the Things! IMC Hackathon 2023"
+description: "OONI shares the results of a hackathon hosted at IMC 2023 in collaboration with ISOC, M-Lab and Censored Planet."
+author: "Arturo Filastò"
+date: "2023-11-24"
+tags: ["ooni", "hackathon", "events"]
+categories: ["blog"]
+---
+
+On 23rd October 2023, right before the [Internet Measurement Conference
+(IMC)](https://conferences.sigcomm.org/imc/2023/) 2023, we
+co-hosted an **internet measurement hackathon** in collaboration with
+the [Internet Society
+(ISOC)](https://www.internetsociety.org/),
+[M-Lab](https://www.measurementlab.net/), [Censored Planet](https://censoredplanet.org/) and
+[IODA](https://ioda.inetintel.cc.gatech.edu/).
+
+In this post we would like to share some of the projects that were
+developed as part of the hackathon. It was great to see how much was
+accomplished in such a short period of time!
+
+The day started with an [introduction to the various datasets](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1DHhGcpCMTbSJE0QKO6ZTSnIPFixLxxBXwZLkqv0wdJA/edit#slide=id.g1723ddbd698_0_18)
+from OONI's Arturo, Censored Planet's Armin, IODA's Zach, ISOC's Amreesh
+and M-Lab's Lai Yi. Following the brief presentations, the participants
+formed teams to work on some of the specific challenges that [we had
+proposed](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bmCwU0ZJCu-xKlIBKqh3rdIJLHZ-vS7UCOfHI-0RxVE/edit#heading=h.nhvc5bssegtl)
+or came up with new ones.
+
+![](images/image1.png)
+
+*Participants were grouped into 3 teams each looking into a different
+topic.*
+
+In total, 4 projects came out of the hackathon:
+
+* Using OONI data to investigate IPv6 connectivity
+* Data triangulation to infer censorship or shutdown events
+* Correlating alarms across multiple datasets
+* Bonus: The Sound of Internet Shutdowns
+
+We share more details below.
+
+{{<table-of-contents>}}
+
+## Using OONI data to investigate IPv6 connectivity
+
+This team [used OONI data to investigate differences and evolution in IPv6 connectivity](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11jqQqG-id2AbP-xtoWfLvHNXWodLhsU7)
+worldwide. Specifically, they looked at IPv6 reachability data derived
+from OONI Web Connectivity measurements from the year 2021 and compared
+them to those from 2023.
+
+By comparing data from these two time intervals, they first noticed that
+there was an increase in OONI measurements from 2021 compared to 2023.
+
+They then went on to analyze how many AS networks seemed to support IPv6
+broken down by country, as can be seen in the following two charts:
+
+![](images/image5.png)
+
+![](images/image3.png)
+
+*Number of ASes failing IPv6 measurements in 2021 and 2023*
+
+They noticed a decline in the number of Autonomous Systems (ASes)
+failing IPv6 tests between 2021 and 2023. This trend indicates
+improvements in IPv6 reliability and a reduction in connectivity issues.
+
+**Note:** The hackathon participants were not aware of this, but the
+sample of data they used from 2021 was only partial (our bad for not
+communicating this adequately), so while the methodology is quite sound,
+the specific findings should be treated with a grain of salt.
+
+## Data triangulation to infer censorship or shutdown events
+
+This team extracted signals for internet shutdowns by comparing multiple
+different datasets (including OONI), for which they used as a signal the
+absolute number of tests run in a particular country.
+
+They started off by looking at the [Internet Society Pulse Shutdown Tracker](https://pulse.internetsociety.org/shutdowns) page
+to extract a list of relevant events and they then extracted relevant
+data from the other datasets (IODA, OONI, M-LAB).
+
+In the figure below, we can see a 3-hour internet shutdown in Iraq in September 2023.
+
+![](images/image2.png)
+
+*Visualization of a shutdown in Iraq on 28 September 2023 which lasted 3
+hours.*
+
+Access to the internet was shut down for 3 hours and this could be
+observed mostly on OONI, IODA, and M-Lab.
+
+## Correlating alarms across multiple datasets
+
+This team used data from NDT, OONI, Cloudflare Radar traffic, Cloudflare
+Speedtest, IODA, and the Google Transparency Report. Their aim was to
+uncover correlations between significant events as captured by these
+diverse platforms. They employed the SARIMA (Seasonal Autoregressive
+Integrated Moving Average) model to identify anomalies in data trends.
+
+![](images/image4.png)
+
+*Using SARIMA for anomaly detection (TIM outage in Italy Feb 05, 2023)*
+
+The team visualized the [TIM Sparkle
+outage](https://pulse.internetsociety.org/blog/italys-internet-outage-a-perfect-storm)
+using the Google Transparency report. More visualization can be found
+[here](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1G1NtLynJGj2j0czTrIpJsDBSB7tYkAx3OMVRriC1CQw/edit#slide=id.g2927800f948_0_0).
+
+## Bonus: The Sound of Internet Shutdowns
+
+Participating in a hackathon also means having some fun and exploring
+new ideas!
+
+OONI's Arturo developed a sonification project which transforms some of
+the features of the [IODA dataset](https://ioda.inetintel.cc.gatech.edu/) into some
+synthesized sounds. This way it's possible to literally listen to an
+internet shutdown by pasting the link of an IODA chart of an event. You
+are then able to play it inside of your web browser.
+
+Below is an example of how an [internet shutdown in Iraq](https://ioda.inetintel.cc.gatech.edu/country/IQ?from=1685389784&until=1687981784)
+sounds like:
+
+{{<youtube vid="Z1TFc1AyqI4">}}
+
+**Code:**
+[https://github.com/hellais/the-sound-of-internet-shutdowns](https://github.com/hellais/the-sound-of-internet-shutdowns)
+
+**Live site:**
+[https://shutdown-sound.vercel.app/](https://shutdown-sound.vercel.app/)
+
+## Conclusion
+
+Overall, we were very impressed by the results the participants were
+able to produce in such a short amount of time. We hope they found the
+hackathon interesting, fun and that it offered them a way to be exposed
+to some new datasets that they may have not already been familiar with.
+We also hope that the hackathon will support participants' future
+internet measurement research efforts!
+
+We would like to thank all the participants for making this such a great
+event. We would also like to thank Google for arranging the conference
+room and lunch, Google Jigsaw for the hackathon prizes, and finally ISOC
+for the hackathon dinner.