Prefix Top Lists Reloaded: A Temporal Prefix Ranking Dataset

Accurate Internet measurements depend on well-defined targets. A popular mechanism for target selection is domain-based top lists, e.g., the Tranco or Cisco Umbrella lists. Such lists have a few shortcomings such as the lack of aggregation across related domain names and high volatility over time. Prefix Top Lists (PTL) were introduced in 2019 to address these issues, by aggregating domain names into IP prefixes and applying a Zipf-based ranking model to improve stability and representativeness, nonetheless, the original PTL resource was discontinued, leaving a gap in publicly available prefix-level data. In this replication study, we revive and enhance the PTL resource by incorporating a broader range of domain-based top lists. Our approach involves mapping domain names to IP prefixes using DNS resolution and BGP routing data, ranking prefixes through a Zipf-based weighting system, and conducting three use-case studies to promote the applicability of PTLs. We release the complete PTL toolchain as open-source software and publish weekly PTL snapshots under https://openintel.nl/data/prefix-top-lists, ensuring sustained, versioned and publicly accessible prefix-level rankings for the measurement community.