Interface counters in segment routing v6: a powerful instrument for traffic matrix assessment

In this work we investigate the use of Segment Routing version 6 (SRv6) interface counters to improve the Traffic Matrix (TM) assessment of an ISP network. SRv6 is a source routing solution for IPv6 networks: it allows defining a network path as a sequence of routers, represented by Segments Identifiers (SID), to be crossed, i.e. a Segment List (SL). SRv6 provides a new set of interface counters able to measure the packets/ bytes of Ingress/Egress flows exploiting the forwarding operations performed on the Segment Identifiers (SIDs) reported in the SLs. In this work, we formally define the contribution of SR counters in the TM computation procedure, by integrating them in the classical TM Assessment problem. The main outcome of the performance analysis are: i) SR counters can greatly reduce the estimation error and, ii) there is a correlation between the TM assessment improvement and the SLs structure.