January 2023 IPv4 map poster

The IPv4 Internet - January 2023 map
Purchase this 22" × 33" poster
Enlarged preview (72dpi)

January 2023 IPv6 map poster

The IPv6 Internet - January 2023 map
Purchase this 22" × 33" poster
Enlarged preview (72dpi)

These posters are visual representations of the Internet's in-use IPv4 and IPv6 address spaces, as seen by the University of Oregon Route Views project on January 1st, 2023.

Each map is divided into 16,777,216 pixels in a 4,096 × 4,096 pixel grid. The IPv4 map depicts the entire global 32-bit address space, with each pixel representing a /24, or 256 IPv4 addresses. The IPv6 map depicts the current in-use global unicast address space (2000::/4), with each pixel representing a /28, or 16 ISP-level /32 allocations. Twelve other IPv6 /4s may be allocated in the future, and are not depicted on the IPv6 map.

Each contiguous block represents an announcement in the global BGP address table. The address space is presented as a Hilbert curve, a fractal representation ensuring all blocks appear as squares or rectangles.

The colors represent the smallest announcement within that pixel, from /8 to /32 on the IPv4 map, and /12 to /64 on the IPv6 map. Black areas are unannounced, red areas are special blocks which are not globally routable, and grey is reserved for future use (though IPv4 240.0.0.0/4 is not expected to ever be globally routable, due to historical limitations).

January 2017 IPv4 map poster detail

100% scale view of a single /8 (152.0.0.0/8) of the IPv4 map. An individual pixel represents a /24, or 256 IPv4 addresses.

January 2017 IPv4 map poster detail

100% scale view of a single /12 (2a00::/12) of the IPv6 map. An individual pixel represents a /28, or 16 ISP-level /32 allocations.

Purchase

VAD IP maps are available on Redbubble, where you can purchase the classic 22" × 33" poster (IPv4, IPv6), or other items with the map designs.

This is a visual representation of the Internet’s IPv4 address space, as seen by the University of Oregon Route Views project on January 1st, 2023. The map is divided into 16,777,216 pixels, with each pixel representing a single /24, or 256 IPv4 addresses. Each contiguous block represents an announcement in the global BGP address table. The address space is presented as a Hilbert curve, a fractal representation ensuring all blocks appear as squares or rectangles. The colors represent the smallest announcement within that pixel, from /8 to /32. Black areas are unannounced, red areas are special blocks defined in RFC 5735 which are not globally routable, and grey is reserved for future use (though is not expected to ever be globally routable, due to historical limitations).

IPv4 poster description text

This is a visual representation of the Internet’s in-use global unicast IPv6 address space, as seen by the University of Oregon Route Views project on January 1st, 2023. The map is divided into 16,777,216 pixels, with each pixel representing 16 ISP-level /32 allocations. A /32 contains approximately 4.3 billion standard /64 networks, and a /64 contains approximately 18 quintillion IP addresses. Each contiguous block represents an announcement in the global BGP address table. The address space is presented as a Hilbert curve, a fractal representation ensuring all blocks appear as squares or rectangles. Colors represent the smallest announcement within that pixel, from /12 to /64. The space depicted is 2000::/4; 3000::/4 is currently allocated but not in use, and 11 more /4s may be allocated to meet future demand.

IPv6 poster description text

How It's Made

Data is taken from the University of Oregon Route Views project's BGP data archives (IPv4, IPv6), specifically rib.20230101.0200.bz2 for the 2023 maps. Each announcement is split into aggregate blocks (/24 for the IPv4 map, /28 for IPv6), with the smallest announcement found for that aggregate block being recorded.

This information is then fed to ipv4-heatmap, which has been modified with several stylistic changes (different color range, font sizes, etc). Map annotations and shadings are hand-compiled from several sources:

The output of ipv4-heatmap is a 4096 × 4096 pixel PNG file which is used in the final poster.

All sources and data (minus the BGP inputs, ipv4-heatmap and bgpdump) are available on GitHub. This includes the collation scripts, annotation data, shading data, and patches. Note that collating the source data can be time consuming and memory demanding.

Previous Posters

While the 2023 poster is the latest available, previous years' posters are still available to purchase:

Additionally, the full-resolution 2015 poster is available for download (2.68 MiB), if you would like to print it yourself.

Thanks

License

Creative Commons License

Copyright © 2015-2019 Ryan Finnie. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Based on works and software © 2009 The Measurement Factory. Based on data collected by the University of Oregon.