Topology Discovery for IPv6 Public Networks

This paper presents Atlas, a system that facilitates the automated capture of IPv6 network topology information from a single probing host. It describes the Atlas infrastructure and its data collection processes and discusses IPv6 network phenomena that must be taken into account by the probing scheme. We also present some intitial results from our probing of the 6Bone, currently the largest public IPv6 network. The results illustrate the effectiveness of the probing algorithm and also identify some trends in prefix allocation and routing policy.