Global ICMPv6 Type 2 (Packet Too Big) Filter Atlas

Per-hop PTB acceptance walk aggregated across countries. Generated 2026-09-22T14:23:27Z

4
countries
1672
AS-paths walked
6365
hop observations
127
transit ASes seen
10
flagged filterers

Top filterers

Transit ASes ranked by filter_score × log(paths_through), so the list elevates ASes with BOTH substantial path coverage AND a high fraction of hops where our forged PTB went unhonoured. Filter score is not_honored / (honored + not_honored) across all hops we tested in that AS's ranges. Minimum 10 distinct paths and 5% filter score to appear here.

*shadowed: not-honored verdicts observed downstream of an earlier break on the same path. Our PTB may never have reached those hops, so they are counted here for transparency but excluded from the filter score and from ranking — they are unattributable, not exonerating. "Seen in runs" counts how many of the last daily runs also ranked this AS: persistent presence is policy, a single appearance may be a fluke.

ASHolder paths honored not_honored shadowed* filter % seen in runs countries (paths)
AS6939HURRICANE - Hurricane Electric LLC, US4862730361691% (n=330)7/7ita(303), aut(137), slo(29), srb(17)
AS1764NEXTLAYER-AS - Next Layer Telekommunikationsdienstleistungs-321151993% (n=16)7/7aut(32)
AS9002RETN-AS - RETN Limited, GB15969994558% (n=168)7/7ita(107), aut(42), slo(8), srb(2)
AS174COGENT-174 - Cogent Communications, LLC, US67225722072% (n=79)7/7ita(41), slo(20), aut(6)
AS41327FIBERTELECOM-AS - Fiber Telecom S.p.A., IT774056558% (n=96)7/7ita(61), aut(11), slo(5)
AS3356LEVEL3 - Level 3 Parent, LLC, US371820652% (n=38)7/7ita(19), slo(12), aut(6)
AS31543MYNET-AS - myNet GmbH, AT142371223% (n=30)4/7aut(14)
AS5405INTERDOTLINK - Inter.link GmbH, DE30163015% (n=19)6/7slo(13), aut(12), ita(5)
AS47147AS-ANX - Anexia Cloud Solutions GmbH, AT2938459% (n=42)6/7aut(29)
AS8412TMA - T-Mobile Austria GmbH, AT29152311% (n=17)7/7aut(29)
Methodology & caveats. For every AS where Type 2 verdicts disagreed across our vantages, we walked the local-vantage forward path hop-by-hop, sending a 1500-byte ICMPv6 Echo to each hop, then a forged ICMPv6 PTB (MTU=1280) sourced from our vantage, then another 1500-byte Echo. If the second Echo Reply arrived fragmented or with a smaller payload, the hop honoured the PTB. Otherwise it didn't.

This tests host-mode PTB acceptance (PTBs aimed at the hop itself). A router that honours PTBs to itself can still be filtering PTBs transiting through it, and conversely a router may ignore ICMPv6 addressed to its own control plane (a common and legitimate CoPP policy) while forwarding transit PTBs perfectly. A high filter score is therefore consistent with a PTB-filtering problem, but is not on its own proof of one; a low score is not proof of transparency either. Treat this as a list of networks worth investigating, not as a finding about any of them. Many hops drop ICMPv6 Echo to themselves or rate-limit it via CoPP; those are recorded as no_response and excluded from the score denominator. Anycast destinations are skipped explicitly.

Local-vantage only -- every walk starts from the orchestrator host. This is the biggest blind spot here, and it is structural, not cosmetic: an AS can only be scored if the orchestrator's own path traverses it AND the destination still answers Echo, because the forged PTB is piggybacked on a working Echo exchange.

So the networks where traffic stops altogether are exactly the ones this table cannot see. Worked example: paths entering AS3212 (Telemach) toward AS28682 and AS60435 get no Echo reply at all from five of our eight vantages, while the three reaching those destinations by another route see them fully open -- a strong, reproducible, path-dependent signal. AS3212 scores nothing here, because the orchestrator reaches both destinations over a different path and never walks the failing one. Findings of that shape appear on the per-AS pages instead, under “reachability depends on the path”.

Per-vantage walks over SSH would close this gap and are the single most useful improvement to this page.

Source data: data/global/ptb_atlas.json · rolling history at data/global/ptb_atlas_history/ (last 30 days). Built daily by scripts/28_global_ptb_atlas.py.