Detecting CLAT presence in 464XLAT deployments from network measurements

Develop a measurement technique that can detect the existence of customer-side NAT46 (CLAT) devices within 464XLAT deployments, despite the CLAT translation hiding IPv6 addresses along the path, so that CLAT usage can be discovered and characterized using platforms such as RIPE Atlas.

Background

The paper studies NAT64 and DNS64 and explicitly excludes 464XLAT from measurement because the customer-side NAT46 component (CLAT) obscures visibility into IPv6 addresses along the path, preventing identification from the vantage points used.

Establishing a method to detect CLAT is important for characterizing 464XLAT deployments (commonly used in cellular networks) and understanding their impact relative to NAT64 and DNS64 in the IPv6 transition.