Survival Analysis and Prediction Model of IP Address Assignment Duration

Abstract

IP addresses of end hosts change when they are re-assigned. We apply survival analysis, which is commonly used in healthcare, on IP addresses to predict their assignment duration (their lifetime). We propose a survival parametric model based on a history of 6 years of address assignments on a worldwide scale. Our model outperforms alternative models both from short-term and long-term views. The custom modelling is also discussed as address assignment varies across Internet service providers (ISPs) and autonomous systems (ASs). A predictable address assignment duration has many applications, including source reputation, topology mapping, and geolocation. We describe a use-case in fraud prevention, where the proposed model is used as a trigger for two-factor authentication. The created dataset of addresses assignment durations is made publicly available.

Keywords

• IP address
• survival
• lifetime
• host
• assignment
• security