The main functionality of the Internet is to provide global connectivity for every node attached to it. In light of the IPv4 address space depletion, large networks are in the process of deploying IPv6. In this paper we perform an extensive analysis of how BGP route propagation affects global reachability of the active IPv6 address space in the context of this unique transition of the Internet infrastructure. We propose and validate a methodology for testing the reachability of an IPv6 address block active in the routing system. Leveraging the global visibility status of the IPv6 prefixes evaluated with the BGP Visibility Scanner, we then use this methodology to verify if the visibility status of the prefix impacts its reachability at the interdomain level. We perform active measurements using the RIPE Atlas platform. We test destinations with different BGP visibility degrees (i.e., limited visibility – LV, high visibility – HV and dark prefixes). We show that the IPv6 LV prefixes (v6LVPs) are generally reachable, mostly due to a less-specific HV covering prefix (v6HVP). However, this is not the case of the dark address space, which, by not having a covering v6HVP is largely unreachable. When talking about the results we present in this paper a better explanation of trace route and some basic concepts of BGP will be provided.

About Andra Lutu

Andra Lutu is currently completing it Ph.D. thesis at IMDEA Networks as Research Assistant. She obtained a B.S. in 2009 in Networks and Software for Telecommunications at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest. She was part of the Orange Romania “Top Talents” programme and of the 2012 Internet Initiative Japan – Innovation Institute Summer Internship Programme. She obtained her Masters Degree in 2010 from Universidad Carlos III Madrid . Her Masters thesis dealt with application of game theory to interdomain routing. She works with Dr. Marcelo Bagnulo, an outstanding contributor to the IETF on IPv6, Shim6 and other related subjects. Andra Lutu’s main research interest is the analysis of the currently deployed interdomain routing protocol (the Border Gateway Protocol) to improve our understanding on how networks modify their routing behavior in order to meet stringent traffic engineering needs: a quantitative study of the impact that can be observed on the rest of the Internet due to the deployment of traffic engineering mechanisms, like prefix desaggregation. For this purpose, a large variety of tools is used on her research, such as game theory, optimization models or BGP routing data analysis.

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