[ipv6-wg] measuring web similarity from dual-stacked hosts

Dear v6 WG,

Measuring Web Similarity from Dual-stacked Hosts
------------------------------------------------

How similar are the webpages accessed over IPv6 to their IPv4 counterparts? –
In situations where the content is dissimilar over IPv4 and IPv6, what factors
contribute to the dissimilarity?

To answer ^ we developed a tool (simweb) and deployed it on 80 geographically
distributed dual-stacked SamKnows probes. A paper presenting results from the
collected dataset got accepted recently. We just released the tool and the
paper [a]. Thought to share it along.

[a] http://goo.gl/sAsDcG

Feedback most welcome!
You may recall a presentation of this work at RIPE 72 [b].

[b] https://ripe72.ripe.net/archives/video/126

Abstract
--------

We compare the similarity of webpages delivered over IPv4 and IPv6. Using the
SamKnows web performance (webget) test, we implemented an extension (simweb)
that allows us to measure the similarity of webpages. The simweb test measures
against ALEXA top 100 dual-stacked websites from 80 SamKnows probes connected
to dual-stacked networks representing 58 different ASes. Using a two
months-long dataset we show that 14% of these dual-stacked websites exhibit a
dissimilarity in the number of fetched webpage elements, with 94% of them
exhibiting a dissimilarity in their size. We show that 6% of these websites
announce AAAA entries in the DNS but no content is delivered over IPv6 when an
HTTP request is made. We also noticed several cases where not all webpage
elements (such as images, javascript and CSS) of a dual-stacked website are
available over IPv6. We show that 27% of the dual-stacked websites have some
fraction of webpage elements that fail over IPv6, with 9% of the websites
having more than 50% webpage elements that fail over IPv6. We perform a
causality analysis and also identify sources for these failing elements. We
show that 12% of these websites have more than 50% webpage elements that
belong to the same origin source and fail over IPv6. Failure rates are largely
affected by DNS resolution error on images, javascript and CSS content
delivered from both same-origin and cross-origin sources. These failures tend
to cripple experience for users behind an IPv6-only network and a
quantification of failure cases may help improve IPv6 adoption on the Internet.

-- Vaibhav

===================================
Vaibhav Bajpai
www.vaibhavbajpai.com

Postdoctoral Researcher
Jacobs University Bremen, Germany
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