Experience with large-scale end user measurement techniques

For business and strategic planning reasons, there is considerable interest in the take-up of protocols such as IPv6 and DNSSEC. Since 2010, at the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), we have been conducting an Internet-wide measurement of end-user IPv6 capability and preference, applying two measurement methods which use JavaScript and Flash/ActionScript to fetch non-displayed pixels in the user's browser. In 2013, we applied these measurement techniques to measure DNS behaviors. We currently collect approximately 500,000 end user measurements network-wide daily. Over 80% of the known active Autonomous System Numbers and 240 of the 250 country codes have been seen at least once in this measurement. This paper discusses the experimental methodology, the measurement experiments that have been conducted, and particular considerations arising from this large-scale measurement approach.