IPv6 dark traffic collection restarted

Tue Apr 24 16:41:17 UTC 2012

Hi,

In 2010, and again in 2011, I ran an experiment to examine the "dark" traffic in IPv6. I did this by announcing the "superblock" 2400::/12 which has been allocated to APNIC for its IPv6 allocations. The superblock announcement is an aggregate and will not disrupt any IPv6 traffic - the packets that will head to this dark traffic collector were on their way to /dev/null in any case.

We are about to run this experiment up again to collect a 2012 data profile for IPv6 dark traffic in 2012. Accordingly, 2400::/12 will be announced by AS3562 - please don't filter it! IPv6 packets are scarce enough already! :-)

This time around we are being assisted by Sandia National Laboratories and ESnet, for which APNIC would like to acknowledge their assistance in this ongoing research activity.

Some URLs:
  - ESnet news item is at: http://www.es.net/services/ipv6-network/esnet-supports-sandia-and-apnic-ipv6-background-radiation-research/
  - LOA for the announcement: http://www.sandia.gov/apnic/authorization.pdf
  - Previous re[port: http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2010-07/dark6.pdf

thanks,

   Geoff