The International Distributed Network Telescope (INDNT) is a collaborative cybersecurity research infrastructure that collects and analyzes unsolicited Internet traffic from unused address space contributed by universities, research and education networks, and research organizations across the United States and beyond. By combining distributed telescope deployments into a single national platform, the INDNT provides researchers with unprecedented visibility into Internet-scale scanning activity, malware propagation, denial-of-service campaigns, and emerging cyber threats while creating high-quality datasets that support cybersecurity research, artificial intelligence, and network science. The INDNT and associated projects have been awarded multiple grants by the National Science Foundation over the past 20 years to meet these objectives.
Whether you are interested in contributing unused address space, conducting research, or developing new cybersecurity tools, INDNT provides a collaborative environment where institutions work together to improve understanding of the global Internet ecosystem.
Internet threats evolve faster than traditional cybersecurity datasets can capture them. INDNT provides continuously collected, real-world observations that enable researchers to:
Detect emerging attack campaigns before they become widespread.
Study global Internet scanning behavior.
Develop and evaluate machine learning models for threat detection.
Understand long-term trends in Internet abuse.
Support reproducible cybersecurity research through shared datasets.
Advance national cyber resilience through collaborative science.
Because the platform is entirely passive, INDNT captures authentic Internet behavior without interfering with production systems or interacting with malicious actors.
INDNT maintains several complementary datasets that support different research applications.
Raw packet captures provide detailed records of unsolicited Internet traffic directed toward participating telescope networks. These datasets support protocol analysis, malware research, traffic characterization, and forensic investigations.
Processed event datasets transform raw packet captures into structured records that are easier to analyze for large-scale statistical studies, visualization, and machine learning workflows.
Aggregated datasets provide longitudinal views of Internet activity, allowing researchers to examine trends over time while reducing storage and computational requirements.
As part of ongoing research initiatives, INDNT is developing curated datasets specifically designed for artificial intelligence and machine learning applications. These datasets include enriched metadata, standardized formats, and labeling pipelines that support reproducible research.
INDNT builds upon one of the world’s longest-running academic network telescope collections, preserving decades of Internet observations that allow researchers to study how Internet threats have evolved.
Researchers are using INDNT data to investigate topics including:
Threat intelligence
Internet scanning behavior
Malware propagation
Distributed denial-of-service activity
Artificial intelligence for cybersecurity
Autonomous threat detection
Internet measurement
Network resilience
Cyber situational awareness
Security operations research
INDNT continues to expand through partnerships with universities, research institutions, regional research and education networks, and other organizations with routable but unused IPv4 address space.
Participating institutions contribute telescope data while maintaining control of their own infrastructure. Merit Research guides deployment, data collection, and integration into the national platform.
Contributors help strengthen the national cybersecurity research community while enabling new discoveries that benefit the broader Internet.
Potential contributors include:
Universities
Regional and state research and education networks
National laboratories
Government research organizations
Cybersecurity research centers
Qualified researchers may request access to INDNT datasets for academic, nonprofit, and approved collaborative research projects.
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