CNS Core: Medium: Collaborative Research: Strategies for Large-Scale IPv6

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

The networking research community has invested significant efforts into measuring adoption, performance, and security aspects of the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)-addressable Internet, originally designed to replace the current Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) Internet to meet the relentless demand for Internet growth and usage. However, IPv6 measurement techniques have largely mirrored those of the current IPv4 Internet, which can yield disappointing coverage and efficiency. Many scientific, engineering, and operational questions require new measurements that explicitly consider unique properties of the IPv6 protocol, implementations, and operational deployment. The project goals target comprehensive, pervasive, accurate, and usable measurement capabilities, focused on IPv6 Internet cartography, and sharing measurement tools and data with a broad range of scientific researchers. This project will rigorously investigate, develop, and evaluate Strategies for Large-Scale IPv6 Active Mapping (SLAM) that meet IPv6-specific challenges: measurement strategies that can amplify our coverage by orders of magnitude; innovations in IPv6-specific algorithms to infer router-level topologies; and analysis and remediation of resiliency, security, and privacy risks to critical communications infrastructure. Operationalizing this capability for use in scientific research will require refining the technique to support distributed deployment, decouple probing from response collection, incorporate additional intelligence, and scale efficiency and performance. Application of the new technique will include an attempt to map the IPv6 infrastructure of mobile providers, a driver of IPv6 adoption. The resulting data will help resolve the IPv6 adoption paradox, with a focus on actual global IPv6 reachability using scientific measurements. This research will also support persistent operational challenges, including detection of IPv6 route hijacks, and geolocation of IPv6 infrastructure. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.