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Discovering the IPv6 Network Periphery

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Passive and Active Measurement (PAM 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCCN,volume 12048))

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Abstract

We consider the problem of discovering the IPv6 network periphery, i.e., the last hop router connecting endhosts in the IPv6 Internet. Finding the IPv6  periphery using active probing is challenging due to the IPv6 address space size, wide variety of provider addressing and subnetting schemes, and incomplete topology traces. As such, existing topology mapping systems can miss the large footprint of the IPv6  periphery, disadvantaging applications ranging from IPv6 census studies to geolocation and network resilience. We introduce “edgy,” an approach to explicitly discover the IPv6 network periphery, and use it to find >64M IPv6  periphery router addresses and >87M links to these last hops – several orders of magnitude more than in currently available IPv6 topologies. Further, only 0.2% of edgy’s discovered addresses are known to existing IPv6 hitlists.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Jeremy Martin, Thomas Krenc, and Ricky Mok for early feedback, John Heidemann for shepherding, Mike Monahan and Will van Gulik for measurement infrastructure, and the anonymous reviewers for insightful critique. This work supported in part by NSF grant CNS-1855614. Views and conclusions are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies or position of the U.S. government or the NSF.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, USA

    Erik C. Rye & Robert Beverly

Authors
  1. Erik C. Rye
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  2. Robert Beverly
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Erik C. Rye .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Anna Sperotto

  2. University of California, San Diego, CA, USA

    Alberto Dainotti

  3. University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Burkhard Stiller

Appendix A: Algorithm Details

Appendix A: Algorithm Details

figure c
figure d

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Rye, E.C., Beverly, R. (2020). Discovering the IPv6 Network Periphery. In: Sperotto, A., Dainotti, A., Stiller, B. (eds) Passive and Active Measurement. PAM 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12048. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44081-7_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44081-7_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-44080-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-44081-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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