Day in the Life of an IPinfo Research Intern: Augustin

Hi there! My name is Augustin Laouar, I'm a first year PhD student at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, advised by Dr. Francesco Bronzino. My research interests focus on systems architecture, network measurements, and privacy. For my PhD, I'm mostly focusing on location data and geolocation systems.

I was initially interested in software engineering and networking, but after a year working as a network engineer and a year as a research engineer, I fell in love with research and decided to pursue a PhD!

I was really excited about the opportunity of a research internship at IPinfo. This type of experience is really meaningful to me since I want to go into a research role in industry after my PhD. IPinfo was a great choice for me: their field of interest is really close to mine, and I already knew the quality of their work and their research team, since I'd interacted with them before while working on an internet measurement paper that used their data.

What I’m Working On

I'm working on enumerating IPv6 addresses through reverse DNS, using a technique called zone walking. The idea is that many networks configure reverse DNS entries for their IPv6 space, and by systematically walking through these zones, we can discover addresses and hostnames that would otherwise be nearly impossible to find because IPv6’s address space is far too vast to scan directly the way you would with IPv4. This matters a lot for IPinfo: better IPv6 coverage means more accurate geolocation and network data for a part of the internet that's still comparatively under-mapped.

My role in this project is to figure out how to make this enumeration approach scale and generalize across the diversity of IPv6 deployment practices we see in the wild, figuring out which zone-walking strategies actually hold up at internet scale.

My Day At Work

Morning
 

I wake up around 8 a.m. I don’t do breakfast. Instead, before starting the day, I head out for a 10 to 15 minute walk and to grab a coffee. It's a nice way to clear my head before diving in.

My workday starts around 9 a.m. The first thing I do is go over my notes from the day before. I try to be pretty rigorous about this: every day, I write a short summary of what got done, any remarks worth keeping, what's left to do, and a plan for the next day. After that, I do a quick pass through notifications: email, Slack, Linear, etc.

Then it's time for two to three hours of deep focus, with as few distractions as possible (no phone, etc.), though my cat still manages to pull me away sometimes! Mornings are when I'm most productive; it's when I can really immerse myself in a problem without interruption.

Noon

I have my first meal of the day around noon. It's almost always the same: four fried eggs, oatmeal with milk, and a piece or two of fruit.

After lunch, I take a 30 to 45 minute break to do whatever I feel like. Usually that means reading a novel for a bit, and spending some time playing with my cat. Sometimes, especially on sunny days, I'll even go outside during the break to get a breath of fresh air.

Afternoon

I generally pick back up on whatever I was working on in the morning. If a meeting with the team or my advisor is coming up, I try to carve out some time beforehand to prepare for it.

I wrap up my day between 5 and 6 p.m. After work, I take an hour to myself, then head out for a walk with my cat on a leash. After that, I drive to my boxing club, and I'm usually back home around 9:30 or 10 p.m., just enough time to rest up before doing it all again the next day!

Takeaways So Far

One of the most rewarding parts of this internship has been discovering what research looks like in an industry setting, working on projects with a direct, concrete application rather than a purely academic one. It's been a great complement to my PhD work.

I've also picked up a lot on the technical side: tools like BigQuery, DAG-based pipelines, and production deployment processes were mostly new to me, and getting hands-on experience with them has been a real plus.

Beyond the technical side, what's really made this internship is the team. I've gotten along great with everyone, including Santiago, the other research intern this year, and the rest of the team has always been available to help out when I hit a wall or to give feedback on my work, something I really appreciate.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from a fully remote internship, but it turned out to be a great experience, both technically and on a human level.