Clusters in the expanse: Understanding and unbiasing IPv6 Hitlists

  • Oliver Gasser
  • , Qasim Lone
  • , Quirin Scheitle
  • , Maciej Korczyński
  • , Pawel Foremski
  • , Stephen D. Strowes
  • , Luuk Hendriks
  • , Georg Carle

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

114 Scopus citations

Abstract

Network measurements are an important tool in understanding the Internet. Due to the expanse of the IPv6 address space, exhaustive scans as in IPv4 are not possible for IPv6. In recent years, several studies have proposed the use of target lists of IPv6 addresses, called IPv6 hitlists. In this paper, we show that addresses in IPv6 hitlists are heavily clustered. We present novel techniques that allow IPv6 hitlists to be pushed from quantity to quality. We perform a longitudinal active measurement study over 6 months, targeting more than 50 M addresses. We develop a rigorous method to detect aliased prefixes, which identifies 1.5 % of our prefixes as aliased, pertaining to about half of our target addresses. Using entropy clustering, we group the entire hitlist into just 6 distinct addressing schemes. Furthermore, we perform client measurements by leveraging crowdsourcing. To encourage reproducibility in network measurement research and to serve as a starting point for future IPv6 studies, we publish source code, analysis tools, and data.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationIMC 2018 - Proceedings of the Internet Measurement Conference
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages364-378
Number of pages15
ISBN (Electronic)9781450356190
DOIs
StatePublished - 31 Oct 2018
Event2018 Internet Measurement Conference, IMC 2018 - Boston, United States
Duration: 31 Oct 20182 Nov 2018

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference, IMC

Conference

Conference2018 Internet Measurement Conference, IMC 2018
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityBoston
Period31/10/182/11/18

Keywords

  • Aliasing
  • Clustering
  • Entropy
  • Hitlist
  • IPv6

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