Review of IPv4 and IPv6 and various implementation methods of IPv6

International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056
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Review of IPv4 and IPv6 and various implementation methods of IPv6
Shraddha S. Jadhav
1
, Beena R. Ballal
2
1
B.E Student, Dept. of Electronics and Telecommunication, Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, Maharashtra, India
2
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Electronics and Telecommunication, Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, Maharashtra,
India
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Abstract - Presently, approximately 25 billion people are
connected worldwide, and these networks are connected through
routers. IPv4 had some deficiencies like Address depletion
problem, Lack of Encryption, and authentication of data
features, which led to the development of IPng/IPv6. The
development of IPV6 and deployment of the same is in process
worldwide using various deployment techniques. These
techniques enable the upgradation of networks to IPv6
deployed networks with little or no intervention of IPv4
services. Greater deployment efforts from a number of small
networks could result in an increasing measure of global IPv6
deployment.
Keywords—IPv4, IPv6, Routing, NAT, Protocols
1. INTRODUCTION
The third layer of the Open System Interconnections model
(OSI) is the Network layer, which is responsible for providing
anIPaddresstopackets,Routing, Inter-networking,andsource
to destination delivery. Also, it receives frames from the data
linklayer(secondlayerofOSImodel)anddeliversthemto their
intended destination based on the address contained within
the frame. The InternetProtocols(IPs)providethelogicaladdress
to the network layer to trace the destination. IETF started to work
on the successor of IPv4, in the early 1990s, which would solve
address exhaustion problems. IPV6 also known as Next
Generation IP or IPng, was designed and developed as a
replacement for IPv4, in 1994 by IETF with its formal description
under RFC 1883 published in 1995. IPV6 was a promising format
for IP because of its advantages such as larger Address Space than
IPv4sinceitincreasesIP addresssizefrom32 bits to 128 bits. It
provides a better header format, dropping some header fields
of IPv4. This simplifies and accelerates the routing process,
new options to permit additional functionalities, provides
support for more security by Encryption and Authentication
of data, providing confidentiality and integrity to the packets.
This paper documents the detailed comparison of IPv4 and
IPv6 Protocols. Also reviews the various implantation
methodologies of IPv6.
2. COMPARISON OF IPv4 AND IPv6
Functions that work in IPv4 were kept in IPng (next-
generation IP i.e., IPv6) and which did not work were
removed. IPv6 supports the same QoS (Quality of Service)
featuresas IPv4, including the DiffServ indication, as well as a new
20- bit traffic flow field [1]. IPv4 has a variable header field
length of 20-60 bytes whereas the IPv6 header is fixed size (40
bytes), which allow routers to process IPv6 packets faster
resulting in traffic that can be forwarded at higher
information rates, giving higher performance, and can be
used for high bandwidth applications [2]. IPv4 uses manual
configuration or Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
whereas IPv6 supports functionalities like auto configuration as
wellas plug andplay [3]. IPv6 provides simpler encapsulation than
IPv4 increasing routing efficiency. Few functions that IPv4
lacks, like IPsec security protocols, ESP (encapsulating
security protocol), and AH (authentication header),are added
to it for developing IPv6. Unlike IPv4, new generation
protocol IPng uses multicast or anycast addresses.
An illustrative comparison based on the limitations of IPv4
and solutions to these limitations of IPv4 in the new
generation protocol IPv6 is shown in the Table I.
TABLE -1: COMPARISON BASED ON FEATURES OF IPv4 AND
IPv6 [3]
Sr
No
.
IPv4 drawbacks overcome by IPv6
Features of
IPv4
(Limitations)
IPv4 features
explanation
Solution by IPv6
1
IPv4 Address
space
IPv4 has almost
used up its
address space of
around 4 billion
with 4, 294, 967,
296 addresses.
IPv6 eliminates
the address
exhaustion issue
by replacing 4
octets of 8 bits
and uses a
hexadecimal
number field.
It provides an
address size of
128 bits (16
bytes) and 2128
address blocks.
2
IPv4
Congestion
in the
IPv4 uses its
Broadcast
functionality and
IPv6 reduces the
network
congestion and

Sr
No
.
IPv4 drawbacks overcome by IPv6
Features of
IPv4
(Limitations)
IPv4 features
explanation
Solution by IPv6
Network Integrated
Header Format
(IHF) for packet
transmission. It
transmits the
packet before
checking the
address of the
end point, this
floods the whole
network
resulting in
congestion.
overcrowding by
packets sent as it
uses Simple
Header Format
(SHF) that checks
and identifies the
destination of the
packets before
sending them.
3
IPv4 Packet
Loss
The Time-To-
Live (TTL)
protocol in the
IPv4 fragmented
packet allocates
a time frame for
each packet that
determines the
timespan of each
packet in the
header, and it
cannot be used
for real-time
applications as
heavy data
traffic may cause
delay in
transmission.
IPv6 routers
make use of hop
limit field which
gives the number
of links the packet
can travel before
getting discarded.
This minimizes
the chances of
losing the packet
during
transmission.
4 IPv4 Security
The Internet
Protocol
Security (IPSec)
on IPv4 is
optional.
IPv6 supports
IPSec and
Authentication
Header (AH) for
encrypting and
authenticating the
packets
transmitted
between two end
points. It provides
secure
transmission.
5
IPv4 Data
Priority
IPv4 does not
provide priority
functionality for
prioritizing the
streaming data.
IPv6 uses Quality
of Service (QoS)
to prioritize the
delay sensitive or
heavy traffic
packets being
sent over the
network.
3. IMPLEMENTATION OF IPv6
Though IPv6 provides many advantages over IPv4, it has still
not been deployed completely by many ISPs as it needs full
path participation. Therefore, different transition
mechanisms have been implemented to avail the features of
both IPv4 and IPv6. These protocols cannot be merged but
can run in parallel using the transition mechanisms. Based on
APNIC data at present only 31% of Internet users are IPv6
capable. The adoption rate of IPv6 varies from high number
of users in India (76%) to above 50% number of users in five
countries namely, Germany, Vietnam, Belgium, Greece, and
Malaysia. Table II below gives an overview of change in
number of users from 2021 to 2022 for top 10 economies.
TABLE -2: HIGHEST ABSOLUTE GROWTH OF USERS OVER
2021 [4]
Rank
IPv6 Users
2021 2022
Chang
e
Users
(est.)
Country
1
164,45
9,081
274,01
9,342
109,56
0,261
820,328,
035
China
2
420,25
8,878
439,31
2,401
19,053,
523
574,511,
661
India
3
9,616,9
19
15,677,
224
6,060,3
05
32,204,9
86
Saudi
Arabia
4
783,66
0
6,587,0
84
5,803,4
24
113,054,
932
Indonesia
5
34,839,
061
38,584,
943
3,745,8
82
89,811,6
43
Mexico
6
58,410,
683
61,762,
731
3,352,0
48
161,217,
993
Brazil
7
23,995,
676
26,879,
572
2,883,8
96
53,010,3
41
Vietnam
8
4,140,1
35
6,647,4
17
2,507,2
82
34,549,1
12
Colombia
9
872,27
9
3,359,0
80
2,486,8
01
9,004,54
7
Guatemala
10
141,52
8
2,435,1
68
2,293,6
40
16,308,2
08
Chile
Major Operating System (OSs) are IPv6-capable.
Therefore, deploying IPv6 at the user and edge site is easier,
using methods allowing distinct IPv6 domains to
communicate with each other by carrying IPv6 traffic over
the existing IPv4 infrastructure before the network
completely gets deployed with IPv6 backbone. The five key
techniques for deploying IPv6 are:

1. Implementing IPv6 using tunneling method
2. Using Dual Stack Backbones
3. IPv6 over MPLS Backbone
4. Protocol Translation Mechanisms
5. Using Dedicated Data Links
3.1 Implementing IPv6 using tunneling method
In tunneling, routers between two IPv6 nodes need not
be IPv6-capable, this decreases dependencies. The tunnel has
two IPv4 routers connected with a virtual point-to-point link,
routing IPv6 packets held by an IPv4 packet over the IPv4
network. Various tunneling technologies have been
developed to support IPv4 over IPv6 tunnel as well as IPv6
over IPv4 tunnel. These technologies are generally
categorized as configured or automatic tunnels, the latter
tunnel type is predefined, and the former is created and torn
down "on the fly" [5]. In configured tunnels, configuring
tunnel endpoints is required to configure the devices to
transmit packets based on the destination, and other tunnel
configuration parameters like Maximum Transmission Unit
(MTU). Whereas in Automatic tunnels, tunneling is based on
information contained in the IPv6 packet, such as source or
destination IP address. Tunneling of IPv6 packet over IPv4
packet is shown in Fig.1 below.
Fig -1: IPv6 over IPv4 Tunneling
The existing IPv4 infrastructure is used for routing IPv6
traffic with the help of a tunneling technique selected based
on the mechanism used by the encapsulating node to
determine the address of the tunnel end node. IPv6
datagrams can be tunneled using IPv6 or IPv4 hosts, and
routers over regions of IPv4 routing topology by
encapsulating them inside IPv4 packets. The resulting
tunneled packet size is managed by the tunneling
encapsulator endpoint, with respect to the tunnel’s maximum
transmission unit (MTU) or packet size and inform the
source if the packet is too large for the tunnel.
There are five methods of tunneling IPv6 traffic:
1. Manual IPv6 tunnels
(ISATAP) tunnels
3.2 Using Dual Stack Backbones
It allows migration of networks, end nodes, and
applications by running IPv4 and IPv6 independently,
coexisting in a dual IP layer backbone for routing. A dual
stack is a protocol stack containing both IPv4 and IPv6
having an identical stack remainder. This allows the same
applications and transport protocols like TCP, UDP, etc to run
over version 4 and 6 protocols [5].
In dual stack, configured on a single interface or multiple
interfaces, the transmission decision is made by the device
depending on the traffic at the destination address. The
packet sent reaches the destination over a dual-channel
provided by dual-stack.
This simple strategy allows the same end system to support
different applications not supporting the new generation
protocol stack to coexist with the upgraded applications.
Also, it enables the upgraded nodes to interoperate with
IPv4-only by using IPv4 and vice versa by selecting and
configuring suitable routing protocols for both the IP
versions [8]. Dual Stack protocols are shown in Fig. 2. The
Dual-stack backbone assigns addresses to endpoints based
on protocol enabled by the network administrator either
DHCPv4 or DHCPv6 [6]. The dual stack has two routing
tables and provides the least Round-Trip Time of 2ms and
high throughput of 64 kb/sec [7]. But increased resource
requirement for providing high bandwidth is a limitation of
this approach [9].
2. Automatic IPv4-Compatible tunnels
3. Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE)
4. Automatic 6to4 tunnels
5. Intra-Site Automatic Tunnel Addressing Protocol
The major limitations of all tunneling mechanisms are a
single point of failure, crossing the firewall is not possible,
and the need for up-gradation and changing of CPEs [6].
Tunneling can be preferred over NAT-PT or Translation
mechanisms because of higher throughput of 23.27 kb/sec,
Bandwidth of 51.2 kb/sec and Average Round Trip Time of
5ms. These observations based on a study done by Sheetal
Singalar in [7] proves tunneling to be a better migration
technique than translation but less desirable than dual stack.

Fig -2: Dual-stack protocols through the OSI layer [5]
3.3 IPv6 over MPLS Backbone
Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) allows to
tunnel IP, Ethernet, IPv6, PPP, Frame relay, etc. In the MPLS
backbone, IPv6 nodes communicate with each other using
packets which are forwarded based on the labels, used for
identifying the destination, over an IPv4 MPLS infrastructure.
The main drivers for deploying an MPLS based forwarding
mechanism for IPv4 include Layer 2 and Layer 3 Virtual
Private Networks, and Traffic Engineering and Fast Reroute
[10]. IPv6 Provider Edge (6PE), and IPv6 VPN Provider Edge
(6VPE) over MPLS, allow the service providers running an
MPLS over IPv4 infrastructure offering IPv6 services with
minor changes in the architecture. 6PE and 6VPE techniques
were evaluated by Alex Leonel Yautibug Coro [11] for three
parameters jitter, delay, and average packet size. The study
concluded that 6PE technique was better than 6VPE for
transmission and reception of streaming data by a difference
of 8%.
3.4 Protocol Translation Mechanisms
Protocol Translation Mechanisms allow IPv4-only or IPv6-
only devices to communicate directly with IPv6-only or IPv4-
only devices, via some bi- directional protocol translation
process. This often involves replacing and/or modifying the
addresses/port numbers in packet headers. It performs the
translation job by maintaining the IPv4 protocol suite inside
the enterprise and translating the address of source and
destination to the equivalent IPv6 addresses of the packets
sent over the IP network. Another approach would be where
an enterprise has transitioned to IPv6 internally but uses
their limited public IPv4 addresses on the outside of a
protocol translator. In this case, the internal IPv6 will be
translated to external IPv4 for transmission of packets over
the Internet. Translation-based mechanisms do not support
multicast and embedded addresses. Also, they have difficulty
translating APIs and cannot combine with secure DNS [6].
The IETF v6Ops Working Group considers the following IPv6
to IPv4 translation methods-
 NAT-Protocol Translation (NAT-PT)
 TCP-UDP relay
 Bump-in-the-Stack (BIS)
 SOCKS-based gateway
3.4.1 Network Address Translation Protocol
Translation
NAT technology is used to translates a private address in
an internal network into a legal public address to prolong
IPv4 availability. It allows IPv4-only hosts to communicate with
IPv6-only hosts and vice versa. It combines address mapping,
protocol translation (SIIT), and a DNS_ALG supporting a bi-
directional communication between IPv4 and IPv6 hosts.
Though NATs promote reuse of the private address space,
they often violate the fundamental design principle of the
Internet which states to have all nodes a unique, globally
reachable address. Thereby, preventing true end-to-end
connectivity for all types of networking applications [2].
NAT-PT has high latency for all traffics due to additional
overhead and provides low throughput [9]. Therefore, it is an
undesirable migration technique.
3.4.2 TCP-UDP relay
TCP-UDP relay mechanism works by setting up separate
connections for IPv4 and IPv6 hosts at the transport layer
and runs on a dedicated server. Then transfers the information
between two. No changes are needed to IPv4 and IPv6 hosts.
3.4.3 Bump-in-the-Stack (BIS)
The BIS mechanism integrates three components, namely
“extension name resolver”, an “address mapper” and a
“translator module”, into the network operating system.
These three components are based on SIIT Algorithm. IPv4
host communicates with IPv6-only host using extra layers for
mapping an IPv6 address into an IPv4 address. BIS uses
transition protocol between TCP/IP module and Network
card driver for snooping data flow and translating the
packets either to IPv6 or IPv4 [6].
3.4.4 SOCKS-based gateway
SOCKS is an Internet protocol that operates at layer
5 of the OSI model and is used for exchanging network
packets through a proxy server between a client and server.
At the application layer, the SOCK-based IPv4/IPv6 gateway
relays the two “terminated” IPv4 and IPv6 connections. It
advances the native SOCKS and connection relay
mechanisms.

4. CONCLUSION
IPv6 provides higher QoS, and security as compared to IPv4.
Different migration techniques are applied to networks based
on various performance metrics. A dual-stack backbone
providing low jitter and delay is a superior mechanism. But,
tunneling can be used in situations where dual stack cannot
be implemented. Though NAT was widely used as a solution
for the extinction of IPv4 addresses, it has several drawbacks
like low throughput, bandwidth, and high RTT. The transition
of IPv6 deployment is inevitable as the whole world is facing
the same issue of IPv4 address blocks shortage. Meeting the
needs of a new market, IPv6 is a durable solution to the
growing internet challenges, providing several flexible
transition mechanisms. More efforts are required to seek
significant levels of IPv6 deployment in major industrialized
nations.
REFERENCES
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