Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

It is an arduous and indolent process to switch to IPv6 technology from the existing IPv4. This paper aims at providing a lucid performance analysis of key techniques used in IPv4 to IPv6 transition. Sustainable and real time topologies are built for each of the three robust techniques, namely, dual stack, tunneling, and network address translation. These implementations are done in an open source Network simulator GNS3 (1.3.13), a wide compatible and realistic simulator. All the topologies are analyzed for latency, efficiency and throughput using wire shark packet analyzer. Networks are built using different commercially used cisco 7200, 3600 and 3700 series routers and used serial and fast ethernet cables for connecting the nodes. All topologies are configured as private, to analyze each technique performance at their maximum potential. This analysis can be found useful in employing the right transition technique depending on the network scenario used as it weigh the advantage and limitation for each technique. The analysis depicts the competence of tunneling for its highest latency comparatively. Among the three methods, Dual Stack displays 100% efficiency in communicating within the network. Network address translation show 94% efficiency as it plays an important role when IPv4 only needs to communicate with IPv6 nodes. In most cases, IPv6 show better performance than IPv4, which lucidly explains the potential of IPv6. The analysis can further be extended to hardware implementation by constructing large topologies and with various other sophisticated routers produced by different vendors.

Keywords: GNS3, IPV4, IPv6, Performance Analysis (Throughput; Latency; Efficiency), Transition Techniques (Dual Stack; Tunneling; Translation), Wireshark