Draft:IThena

iThena is a volunteer computing project running on Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC).

Introduction
The goal of the iThena project is to model the infrastructure of networks of the global Internet as real as possible. This modelling can be done on many levels: routers, PoPs (point of presence) and AS (autonomous systems). The model may have characteristics such as latency, bandwidth, packet loss and others.

The first initiated test activity of the iThena project took place on August 29, 2019. First official message about the project was sent September 26, 2019.

On September 10, 2020 the iThena project was placed on the official BOINC project list of the University of California, Berkeley. On September 11, 2020, David Anderson publishes "Welcome iThena" news on the official BOINC forum.

Origin of the project name
The name of the project to the word cluster: iThena = Internet + Athena. The word Internet defines the global network infrastructure and the information it contains. The word Athena has a standard genesis that refers to Greek mythology and defines the crowds of knowledge, wisdom and prudence.

Architect & System Administrator
The main architect and system administrator is Lukasz Swierczewski, who was previously the administrator of many other large scale systems (e.g. OProject@Home ). He graduated from Lomza State University of Applied Sciences in Łomża (Engineer's degree ), Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin (Master's degree ) and National Defence University of Warsaw (Postgraduate education). Computer scientist and programmer supporting open-source software initiatives. Previously mainly programmer in the area of high performance computing systems (HPC) and supercomputers. A member of the Polish Mathematical Society.

Currently, the project is developed by the Cyber-Complex Foundation (place of institution registration: Europe/Poland). The Foundation is also registered as a publisher with the National Library of Poland. The Digital Library of the National Library of Poland and the general-purpose open-access repository Zenodo make available the open datasets that result from the iThena project.

Predecessors and similar projects
Historically, the predecessor of iThena is DIMES. DIMES analysed the topology of the Internet. CAIDA (Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis) and RIPE Atlas also has a great contribution to the mapping of the network structure.

Nature of the project
The project has an experimental and research character. iThena in its area is largely consistent with MASINT (Measurement and Signature Intelligence) - intelligence, which is the analysis of data and information obtained through distributed measurement systems in order to determine all characteristics and other information about the recognized object. However, in this case, the project activity space is cyberspace.

The BOINC clients applications that are launched mapping the network structure of the Internet. The iThena applications in the initial phase of the project are only in NCI (CPU Non-Intensive) mode. They do not make much use of computing resources (CPU time, RAM memory). However, the computer network traffic can be used to a much greater extent. iThena NCI applications map and/or check the availability of individual network nodes using generally known and legal technologies (e.g. ping, traceroute, Iperf, OWAMP ). The data obtained under the iThena project comes from open sources to a key extent. The whole open society of Internet users (including BOINC users) contributes to the implementation and development of the system. The data aggregated within the project will be partially classified as open and made available under an open licenses.

On the basis of data aggregated in the system it is possible to detect network anomalies. This area contains anomalies concerning manipulation of data transmission routes - IP Hijack Attacks and other issues.

It is planned to use distributed nodes for typical computing tasks. By 24 April 2020, iThena has made about 250 billion distributed measurements. Project statistics are available, among others, in Free-DC and BOINCStats services.

Although the iThena Project currently mainly implements distributed network measurements, there are modules that are typically computational. A subsystem using OpenHPC technology is such a module. The High-performance computing cluster (installation type: Research) of the Cyber-Complex Foundation was officially registered on March 19, 2021. The computing modules are an integral part of the whole system and are fed by measurement data.

iThena in the media
Information about the project is available in many information resources of many communities (including BOINC teams): seti-germany.de, bc-team.org , and others. A directory page for the project and other resources related to this project is also available in the official CAIDA resource catalog.

An Australian programmer, technologist, blockchain expert Delta described in an article on Steemit the measurement principle implemented by the iThena distributed system.

In the Polish magazine Forum Akademickie No. 5/2020 dealing with research and higher education issues an article was published describing the problems of the iThena project research area. The content of the entire issue of the magazine is available in Polish for free (PDF or online website ).The official information about free access to the article was published in September 2020

A talk entitled "iThena Project: Distributed measurements and analysis of the global Internet – BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) and Big Data environment​" was presented at the LVEE 2020 Winter Edition conference on December 19, 2020.

The project has been mentioned several times on BOINC Radio. Sample broadcast: BOINC Radio - BOINC Network EPISODE 3, 29th January 2021: Sensor Projects and others. On October 24, 2022, an entire radio episode was dedicated to the iThena project.

In the Polish magazine Nowoczesna Myśl Narodowa (ang. Modern National Thought) No. 4-5 December 2020 - January 2021 an interview with Lukasz Swierczewski appeared. The interview was conducted independently by the journal's Editorial Board. This interview also touched on the distributed and global iThena project. The creator of the project also mentioned other initiatives related to this project.

Part of the International Open Data Day initiative was an event: "Open.Data HowFaster.NET: Open Internet network measurement datasets". The event was held on March 6, 2021, and presented the open data available from the HowFaster.NET project, which is the result of network measurements obtained from the iThena project.

The iThena project is rapidly growing with open-source and advanced Kernel-based Virtual Machine / OS-level virtualization (LXC) environments. The website of major virtualization technology developer Proxmox mentions the iThena project story

As of early 2022, the iThena project is classified as a marathon in Formula BOINC competition

As of Q3 2021, the iThena project is integrated into the Open Observatory of Network Interference platform and implements distributed censorship measurements over the Internet. The iThena platform regularly performs measurements on censorship surveys and transfers the analysis results to the OONI systems.

Statistics on the iThena project are also officially, regularly published in the National Library of Poland. The information is stored digitally and on optical media also in the form of legal deposit copies at the National Library and the Jagiellonian Library.