Ioana Livadariu successfully defended her PhD

Since its beginning, the Internet has undergone an unforeseen evolution, becoming an indispensable tool that is used daily for both personal and business purposes. Yet, the core part of the protocol suite, TCP/IP, that underpins the Internet has been fairly static. The Internet Protocol (IP) is one of the core protocols providing support for the addressing and routing in the Internet. IP version 4 (IPv4) was the first version of this protocol to be widely deployed. However, the unexpected expansion of the Internet prompted, as early as in 1992, the need to devise solutions for the future depletion of the IPv4 address space. These efforts eventually led to introducing and standardizing the IPv6 protocol in 1998 as a permanent alternative to IPv4. Speaking in terms of addresses, IPv6 significantly expanded the number of available addresses. However, IPv6 is not backward compatible with IPv4. Despite having been proposed more than 20 years ago, IPv6 uptake has been relatively slow.

This research focuses on understanding of the IPv6 adoption in the Internet. The complexity and scale of the IPv4 to IPv6 transition makes this process the largest change in the Internet infrastructure to date. This process affects the broader Internet ecosystem including content and access network providers, consumer electronics manufacturers, application software developers and industries supporting network management and security. The Internet's ongoing expansion and the different factors that influence the adoption contribute even more to the complexity of the transition. Hence, understanding the IPv6 adoption in the Internet requires not only large-scale measurements to characterize factors that influence the adoption, but also a model that simulates the adoption process and provides insights for regulators and stakeholders. The findings of this research indicate that the IPv6 adoption may be decades away. A large scale growth in demand for addresses seems to be the only accelerator for the adoption.

The thesis is written within the field of Communication Systems. The work has been conducted at Simula Research Laboratory.

Prior to the defense, at 10:15, Ioana Livadariu presented her trial lecture "The current state and future of IPv6 network monitoring".

The adjudication committee

• Professor Cristel Pelsser, University of Strasbourg, France
• Senior Researcher Stephen D. Strowes, RIPE Network Coordination Centre, the Netherlands
• Professor Pål Halvorsen, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway

Chair of the disputation

• Head of Department Ellen Munthe-Kaas, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo

Supervisors

• Senior Research ScientistAhmed Elmokashfi, Simula Research Laboratory
• Research Scientist Amogh Dhamdhere, University of California, San Diego
• Professor Olav Lysne, Simula Research Laboratory

Read more

Announcement of the PhD defense at the University of Oslo's web pages.