A Comprehensive Study of Accelerating IPv6 Deployment

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the rapid IPv6 deployment in China, revealing unbalanced network states and security challenges through a new measurement framework and comparison with past global events.

Contribution

It introduces a novel measurement framework and passive data collection method to study IPv6 deployment dynamics during China's acceleration phase.

Findings

Unbalanced network status during deployment

Security issues like privacy challenges identified

Comparison with past global IPv6 events

Abstract

Since the lack of IPv6 network development, China is currently accelerating IPv6 deployment. In this scenario, traffic and network structure show a huge shift. However, due to the long-term prosperity, we are ignorant of the problems behind such outbreak of traffic and performance improvement events in accelerating deployment. IPv6 development in some regions will still face similar challenges in the future. To contribute to solving this problem, in this paper, we produce a new measurement framework and implement a 5-month passive measurement on the IPv6 network during the accelerating deployment in China. We combine 6 global-scale datasets to form the normal status of IPv6 network, which is against to the accelerating status formed by the passive traffic. Moreover, we compare with the traffic during World IPv6 Day 2011 and Launch 2012 to discuss the common nature of accelerating deployment. Finally, the results indicate that the IPv6 accelerating deployment is often accompanied by an unbalanced network status. It exposes unresolved security issues including the challenge of user privacy and inappropriate access methods. According to the investigation, we point the future IPv6 development after accelerating deployment.