The five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) provide the critical function of IP address resource del egation and registration. The accuracy of registration data directly impacts Internet operation, management, security, and optimization. In addition, the scarcity of IP addresses has brought into focus conflicts between RIR policy and IP registration ownership and use. The tension between a free-market based approach to address allocation versus policies to promote fairness and regional equity has resulted in court litigation that threatens the very existence of the RIR system. We develop WHEREIS, a measurement-based approach to geolocate delegated IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes at an RIR-region granularity and systematically study where addresses are used post-allocation and the extent to which registration information is accurate. We define a taxonomy of registration ``geo-consistency'' that compares a prefix's measured geolocation to the allocating RIR's coverage region as well as the registered organization's location. While in aggregate over 98% of the prefixes we examine are consistent with our geolocation inferences, there is substantial variation across RIRs and we focus on AFRINIC as a case study. IPv6 registrations are no more consistent than IPv4, suggesting that structural, rather than technical, issues play an important role in allocations. We solicit additional information on inconsistent prefixes from network operators, IP leasing providers, and collaborate with three RIRs to obtain validation. We further show that the inconsistencies we discover manifest in three commercial geolocation databases. By improving the transparency around post-allocation prefix use, we hope to improve applications that use IP registration data and inform ongoing discussions over in-region address use and policy.

翻译：五大区域互联网注册管理机构（RIR）承担着IP地址资源分配与注册的关键职能。注册数据的准确性直接影响互联网的运营、管理、安全与优化。此外，IP地址资源的稀缺性使得RIR政策与IP注册所有权及实际使用之间的冲突日益凸显。基于自由市场的地址分配方式与促进公平及区域平等的政策之间的张力已引发法律诉讼，甚至威胁到RIR体系的存在基础。本文开发了WHEREIS——一种基于测量的方法，能够在RIR区域粒度上对已分配的IPv4和IPv6前缀进行地理定位，并系统研究地址在分配后的实际使用位置以及注册信息的准确程度。我们构建了注册"地理一致性"的分类体系，通过对比前缀的实测地理位置与分配RIR的覆盖区域及注册机构所在地来评估一致性。尽管总体上有超过98%的被检测前缀与我们的地理定位推断相符，但不同RIR之间存在显著差异，本文以AFRINIC作为典型案例进行深入分析。IPv6注册的一致性并未优于IPv4，这表明结构性问题（而非技术问题）在地址分配中起着重要作用。我们向网络运营商、IP租赁服务商征集了关于不一致前缀的补充信息，并与三家RIR合作进行数据验证。进一步研究表明，我们发现的这些不一致现象同样存在于三个商业地理定位数据库中。通过提升地址分配后使用情况的透明度，本研究旨在改进依赖IP注册数据的应用程序，并为当前关于区域内地址使用及政策的讨论提供实证依据。