Day in the Life of an IPinfo Research Intern: Mert

Hi everyone! I'm a fourth-year PhD student at the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia. My research focuses broadly on internet measurement, with a particular emphasis on the challenges of IPv6 scanning and the identification of aliasing behavior in networks. Essentially, understanding how to accurately detect and characterize fully-responsive networks (some of them are very large!). 

I was initially interested in data mining during my undergrad, and worked closely with some of the faculty. That early experience made me really curious and motivated me to pursue research more seriously. Later, during my Master’s at the University of Iowa, I took a computer security course, which made me fascinated with the complexities/efforts of securing and deploying modern networks. Eventually, I joined a network security and privacy lab there for more research, which led me deeper into internet measurement studies, and ultimately to my current PhD program at Georgia Tech.

This summer, I was really excited for the opportunity to intern at IPinfo. What really attracted me to IPinfo was the opportunity to work at the intersection of industry and research. IPinfo stands out as one of the companies that not only supports, but actively engages with academic research, which is incredibly motivating for someone like me who’s coming from a research-heavy background. I think that this is a great opportunity to work on problems that can connect academic curiosity and real-world applications.

What I’m Working On

I’m focused on laying the groundwork for a more accurate and efficient Autonomous System (AS) classifier. The goal is to better understand the behavior and categorization of ASes, whether they belong to hosting providers, ISPs, educational institutions, governments, or other entities (especially focusing on Personal ASes which has not been quite explored systematically in the literature yet).

My Day at Work

Here’s a snapshot of what one of my work days looks like for me. Although most of the time I spend time connecting and analyzing different types of data, I focused more on literature, meetings, and experimentation on prior work for this specific day:

• Morning (8:30 - 10:15 AM): I started my day with some breakfast: eggs, hashbrowns, tomatoes, and toast, while reading some news. I got ready for our team meeting by sketching a summary of the meeting I had yesterday for a potential collaboration, and also checking my emails and going over notes/to-dos from our recent company research team retreat.
• Quick Break (10:15 - 10:30 AM): Took a short break to skim through some tech news. I came across an interesting article discussing how LLMs can sometimes hallucinate wrong/malicious URLs, potentially leading to phishing risks.
• Research Team Meeting (10:30 - 11:30 AM): We had our first team meeting since the retreat, discussing interns' project updates and planning upcoming collaborations. After the meeting, I refined my to-do list for the week to reflect the discussion in the team meeting. Here is a picture from our research team meeting!

• Relocation (11:30 AM - 12:25 PM): I really like working in office-like environments! After the meeting, I headed into my office after applying the very much required sunscreen (Hotlanta definitely lives up to its name!). On the way, I grabbed a cold brew from a local coffee shop (arguably has the best lattes in town) and had a chat with other potential collaborators about the project/meeting logistics.
• Planning & Reading (12:30 - 2:30 PM): I followed up on scheduling collaboration meetings, did a quick literature review to catch up on recent papers that we might have missed, and started reading the AS Hegemony paper, to learn more about AS/network connectivity and the metrics. To read the paper, I went to a common area in my office building which definitely has a better view than my desk (my desk looks at one of the parking lots…):

• Lunch Break (2:30 - 3:15 PM): I normally pack my lunch with me, but today I was definitely craving for a Banh mi! I took a late-lunch break at a local Vietnamese spot.
• Afternoon Deep Dive & Wrap-up (3:15 - 5:45 PM): Finished reading the paper, worked on regenerating some figures in the paper to understand how everything connects to each other, and compiled my notes into a write-up to help guide our project direction (also questions for the next team meeting) before I call it for the day.

My Internship Takeaways So Far

One of the most interesting aspects of my internship so far has been learning how to navigate and process large-scale and very complex internet data. The engineers and researchers at IPinfo have very practical approaches to how they handle complex datasets, and I’ve learned a great deal from them about efficiently filtering, validating, and analyzing data at scale.

Another fun (and surprising) discovery has been the fun side of Autonomous Systems. While we often categorize networks into broad/traditional labels, such as hosting, ISPs, education, or government, there’s a lot more character when you look closer. Some AS and organization names are funny, maybe based on some inside jokes, poems — sometimes you might find descriptions in WHOIS records that make you smile!

Interested in being a research intern in 2026? Reach out to our research team.