NETCOM Research Group

Philipp Richter from TU Berlin has been awarded one 2017 IETF/IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP) for a study done in collaboration with a researcher at IMDEA Networks. The study analyses a critical aspect of today's Internet: the depletion of IPv4 address space. Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez, who recently incorporated to the research team of IMDEA Networks Institute, in Spain, is one of the co-authors of the article titled «A Multi-perspective Analysis of Carrier-Grade NAT Deployment». This is the second time that a collaboration involving IMDEA Networks’ researchers (Pierre Francois) receives this prize.

IPv4 is the fourth version of the Internet Protocol (IP), one of the core internetworking protocols which is used to identify and connect devices on a network through an addressing system. Every device connecting to the Internet, from computer to cell phones to smart TVs requires an IP address. However, the pool of available IPv4 addresses was depleted at a faster rate than initially anticipated before the consolidation of the next generation of IPv6 technologies.

As Internet Service Providers (ISPs) face IPv4 address scarcity, they increasingly turn to network address translation (NAT) to accommodate the address needs of their customers, deploying Carrier-Grade NATs (CGNs) to apply address translation to many independent and disparate endpoints spanning physical locations beyond the home network. This phenomenon so far has received little in the way of empirical assessment. «A Multi-perspective Analysis of Carrier-Grade NAT Deployment» presents a first broad and systematic study of the deployment and behavior of CGN deployment on today's Internet, and report on characteristics of commonly deployed CGNs and their effect on end users.

The ANRP award is granted yearly for recent results in applied networking research that are relevant for transitioning into shipping internet products and related standardization efforts. The awards are given by a selected international committee of the IETF (The Internet Engineering Task Force) and its research arm, the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF). Together they form one of the largest communities of network designers, operators, vendors, policy makers and researchers, who agree the standard and evolution of Internet architecture and protocols.

About the authors of this research

Philipp Richter from TU Berlin is the leading author of this research, performed in collaboration with a team of scientists from various organizations in Germany, USA, Japan and Spain:  Florian Wohlfart (TU Munchen), Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez (IMDEA Networks / ICSI), Mark Allman (ICSI), Randy Bush (Internet Initiative Japan), Anja Feldmann (TU Berlin), Christian Kreibich (ICSI / Lastline), Nicholas Weaver (ICSI / UC Berkeley), and Vern Paxson (ICSI / UC Berkeley). Their work was first published in the proceedings of the ACM Internet Measurement Conference 2016 (ACM IMC 2016).