Conference Proceedings
Capturing ghosts: Predicting the used ipv4 space by inferring unobserved addresses
S Zander, LLH Andrew, G Armitage
Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference IMC | ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY | Published : 2014
Abstract
The pool of unused routable IPv4 prefixes is dwindling, with less than 4% remaining for allocation at the end of June 2014. Yet the adoption of IPv6 remains slow. We demonstrate a new capturerecapture technique for improved estimation of the size of "IPv4 reserves" (allocated yet unused IPv4 addresses or routable prefixes) from multiple incomplete data sources. A key contribution of our approach is the plausible estimation of both observed and unobserved-yet-active (ghost) IPv4 address space. This significantly improves our community's understanding of IPv4 address space exhaustion and likely pressure for IPv6 adoption. Using "ping scans", network traces and server logs we estimate that 6.3 ..
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Funding Acknowledgements
This research was supported by Australian Research Council grants LP110100240 (with APNIC Pty Ltd) and FT0991594. We thank Geoff Huston, George Michaelson, Valve Corporation, A. Reynolds, Swinburne ITS, Caltech IMSS, D. Buttigieg, C. Tassios, R. Bevier, B. Mattern, USC/ISI and J. Heidemann for providing data. We thank our shepherd X. Dimitropoulos and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.