Short answers, pulled from the story.
LOBSTER is a European network monitoring system that began operations in the year 2004. It was designed to observe internet traffic passively by recording every single IP packet that flowed through its monitored links without actively probing the network.
Thirty-six LOBSTER sensors were deployed across nine different countries to create a vast web of observation points spanning the continent. At its peak, the system monitored traffic flowing across 2.3 million IP addresses.
LOBSTER ceased operations in 2007 after leaving behind a legacy of advanced infrastructure that fed into the IST 2.3.5 Research Networking testbeds. The project contributed to the improvement of internet infrastructure across Europe and influenced future network monitoring systems.
LOBSTER detected more than 400,000 Internet attacks, highlighting the scale of threats facing the digital world at the time. These attacks were real, active attempts to compromise networks, steal data, or disrupt services.
MAPI stands for Monitoring Application Programming Interface and it was created specifically for the LOBSTER project to allow application programmers to express complex monitoring needs. It enabled the development of remote and distributed passive network monitoring applications that could receive monitoring data from multiple sensors simultaneously.