School of Computer Science PGR Seminar: Samuel J. Ivey

Samuel J. Ivey will present Is IPv6 Routing Growth Starting to Slow? Modelling 15 Years of Global Routing State

Abstract: The size of the global routing table matters for Internet scalability, router memory, and control plane stability. In this talk, I present a longitudinal study of IPv6 routing state from 2010 to 2025 using annual measurements from six RIPE RIS route collectors. Rather than assuming a single growth law, the study compares several competing model families and evaluates them using both model selection and rolling backtests.

The main result is that the apparent growth regime changes over time. Earlier fitting windows are better described by rapid growth models, while later windows increasingly favour sigmoidal behaviour, suggesting that IPv6 routing growth may be moving towards a more constrained phase. At the same time, the best fitting model is not always the best short term predictor, which raises an important methodological point about how model quality should be interpreted in network measurement.

I will focus on the measurement design, the model comparison framework, and what these results imply for understanding and forecasting the future scale of IPv6 routing.

Bio: Samuel Ivey is a PhD student in the School of Computer Science here. His research focuses on Internet measurement, and the modelling of routing data, with a particular interest in the implementation of ILNP. He is supervised by Prof Saleem Bhatti.