On the Dynamics of IP Address Allocation and Availability of End-Hosts

TL;DR

This study measures end-host IP address dynamics using a novel approach, revealing that most hosts have stable IPs but some change frequently, impacting network security and peer-to-peer applications.

Contribution

It introduces a new measurement method using periodic reporting from uniquely identified hosts, providing more accurate insights into IP address stability and dynamics.

Findings

Over 60% of hosts have fixed IP addresses

90% median availability of hosts

Some hosts change IP addresses more than 30 times

Abstract

The availability of end-hosts and their assigned routable IP addresses has impact on the ability to fight spammers and attackers, and on peer-to-peer application performance. Previous works study the availability of hosts mostly by using either active pinging or by studying access to a mail service, both approaches suffer from inherent inaccuracies. We take a different approach by measuring the IP addresses periodically reported by a uniquely identified group of the hosts running the DIMES agent. This fresh approach provides a chance to measure the true availability of end-hosts and the dynamics of their assigned routable IP addresses. Using a two month study of 1804 hosts, we find that over 60% of the hosts have a fixed IP address and 90% median availability, while some of the remaining hosts have more than 30 different IPs. For those that have periodically changing IP addresses, we find that the median average period per AS is roughly 24 hours, with a strong relation between the offline time and the probability of altering IP address.