Analyzing challenging aspects of IPv6 over IPv4

The exponential expansion of the Internet has exhausted the IPv4 addresses provided by IANA. The new IP edition, i.e. IPv6 introduced by IETF with new features such as a simplified packet header, a greater address space, a different address sort, improved encryption, powerful section routing, and stronger QoS. ISPs are slowly seeking to migrate from current IPv4 physical networks to new generation IPv6 networks. ‎The move from actual IPv4 to software-based IPv6 is very sluggish, since billions of computers across the globe use IPv4 addresses. The configuration and actions of IP4 and IPv6 protocols are distinct. Direct correspondence between IPv4 and IPv6 is also not feasible. In terms of the incompatibility problems, all protocols can co-exist throughout the transformation for a few years. Compatibility, interoperability, and stability are key concerns between IP4 and IPv6 protocols. After the conversion of the network through an IPv6, the move causes several issues for ISPs. The key challenges faced by ISPs are packet traversing, routing scalability, performance reliability, and protection. Within this study, we meticulously analyzed a detailed overview of all aforementioned issues during switching into ipv6 network

IP Tunneling and Stateless DHCPv6 Implementation in an Enterprise Network

IPv4 has so many limitations such as limited assignable addresses, complex subnetting structure, and inefficient employment of NAT among others. It is because of these shortcomings of IPv4 that IPv6 protocol was introduced. IPv6 increases efficiency in routing and packet processing, promotes a simplified network configuration, supports new services and adds to the improvement QoS by reducing latency during packet transfer. There is therefore a need to move to the IPv6 platform. However, such a process is not automatic but deliberate and requires dealing with the current complexities of the IPv4 network. Tunneling is one of the common ways of transiting from IPv4 to IPv6 and vice versa. In this paper we simulated an IPv6to4 tunnel using cisco packet tracer and GNS software. It was shown that tunneling is a possibility and an effective step to preserving IPv4 infrastructure investments towards migrating from IPv4 to IPv6

A Survey on Handover Management in Mobility Architectures

This work presents a comprehensive and structured taxonomy of available techniques for managing the handover process in mobility architectures. Representative works from the existing literature have been divided into appropriate categories, based on their ability to support horizontal handovers, vertical handovers and multihoming. We describe approaches designed to work on the current Internet (i.e. IPv4-based networks), as well as those that have been devised for the "future" Internet (e.g. IPv6-based networks and extensions). Quantitative measures and qualitative indicators are also presented and used to evaluate and compare the examined approaches. This critical review provides some valuable guidelines and suggestions for designing and developing mobility architectures, including some practical expedients (e.g. those required in the current Internet environment), aimed to cope with the presence of NAT/firewalls and to provide support to legacy systems and several communication protocols working at the application layer

Some reflections on IPv6 adoption in Australia

IPv6 is an inevitable upgrade to Internet Protocol (IP), the underlying protocol uponwhich the Internet is based, and solves many problems with the existing technologyincluding limited address space, performance and security. Although IPv6 has beensupported by products from major vendors for many years, adoption has beenpractically non-existent. Meanwhile, the Internet continues to grow and the size ofthe problem increases.This unsatisfactory situation is a consequence of network externalities in whichrational individuals have no motivation to be the “first-mover†. We argue thatgovernment action is required to promote diffusion of IPv6, but note that this isdifficult and may be unlikely in the absence of a business case. Making the case forIPv6 should not be problematic given the range of “hidden†costs of retaining thestatus quo; however, there has been no systematic effort to assess such costs. We thusrecommend a number of directions for future research to address this deficienc

A practical approach to network-based processing

The usage of general-purpose processors externally attached to routers to play virtually the role of active coprocessors seems a safe and cost-effective approach to add active network capabilities to existing routers. This paper reviews this router-assistant way of making active nodes, addresses the benefits and limitations of this technique, and describes a new platform based on it using an enhanced commercial router. The features new to this type of architecture are transparency, IPv4 and IPv6 support, and full control over layer 3 and above. A practical experience with two applications for path characterization and a transport gateway managing multi-QoS is described.Most of this work has been funded by the IST project GCAP (Global Communication Architecture and Protocols for new QoS services over IPv6 networks) IST-1999-10 504. Further development and application to practical scenarios is being supported by IST project Opium (Open Platform for Integration of UMTS Middleware) IST-2001-36063 and the Spanish MCYT under projects TEL99-0988-C02-01 and AURAS TIC2001-1650-C02-01.Publicad

Analysis of BGP4 Peering Establishment Time on IPv6 Connection over 6PE and 6VPE

Nowadays, because of the exhaustion of IPv4 address space, IPv6 is increasingly being used on enterprise networks. Usually, an enterprise uses an MPLS network from a Service Provider to interconnect their IPv4 network sites. Although MPLS Service Providers mostly built their MPLS backbone based on IPv4, their MPLS backbone have the capability to transport IPv6 traffic of their customers. Two methods can be used by the MPLS Service Provider to connect its customer IPv6 network, which is 6PE (IPv6 Provider Edge Routers) and 6VPE (IPv6 VPN Provider Edge Router). Enterprises generally use a BGP routing protocol to interconnect their networks, and they need to use the best method that suits their requirement from their MPLS Service Provider to transport their IPv6 traffic (including the BGP protocol). The MPLS Service Providers need to consider the advantages and disadvantages of both methods. This paper illustrates the analysis of BGP4 (current BGP version) IPv6 peering establishment time over 6PE and 6VPE methods. The MPLS Service Providers can use the analysis results of this study to determine the suited method to interconnect its customers' IPv6 networks

Towards cloud-aware policy enforcement with universal cloud classification as a service (UCCaaS) in software defined networks

Network services are a critical component of today's networks. They apply critical functions (e.g. security, routing or quality of service) to traffic to enhance the network operators and application consumers experience. Today these services are inserted physically on the data-forwarding plane without providing much flexibility to deal with different traffic types or affiliations. Cloud Computing, however, demands policy enforcement on a per-Provider, per-Service and/or per-Tenant basis. In addition, there is an increasing need for dynamic transparent network chaining independent of the underlying transport infrastructure. We first introduce the concept of Universal Cloud Classification as a Service (UCCaaS). Followed by highlighting how it can be leveraged in conjunction with Network Service Headers (NSH) to address above challenges. UCC provides an addressing scheme to isolate traffic streams on a per-provider, per-service and/or per-tenant basis. To enable bi-directional policy enforcement in network functions we extend the UCC proposal by adding source and destination support. NSH is a way to steer network traffic dynamically across a set of network functions. We demonstrate the feasibility and advantages of our UCCaaS + NSH proposal with an example application, where a service chain defines Access Control Lists and traffic rate limiting on a per-Service and per-Tenant basis. Our proposal opens a door for a wide range of cloud-aware network services and functions