The Study On The Performance Of IPv6and IPv4Inter-networking

The IP addressing is one of key technologies of Internet. At present, the serious shortage ofavailable IPv4addresses is hindering the further development of the network and application. Theupcoming Internet evolution based on IPv6provides in fundamental a solution to the problem ofIP address depletion, while faces many challenges. Since IPv6is not directly compatible withIPv4, it will coexist with IPv4for a long period of time. The research of the interoperability ofIPv6and IPv4network as well as the performance of hybrid inter-networking becomes one of hottopices on the evolution way to IPv6.Firstly, this thesis analyze the architecture of the IPv6protocol and the status of IPv6,including the historical background, technologic characteristics, the structure of addressing andprotocol functions. Secondly, it makes an analysis and comparison between different kinds oftechnologies during the transition phases, including Network Address Translation, Tunnel andDual-Stack schemes. Finally, it presents a design and development of IPv4and IPv6interoperability test platform on the basis of open-source software GNS3, and the interoperabilityperformance of three networking cases is studied by the platform.On the basis of the platform, we carried out experiments to make a comparison among thethree experimental environments: pure IPv4network, pure IPv6network and IPv6across the IPv4tunnel, all aiming at the end-to-end delay and packet loss performance evaluations. Studies haveshown that packet losses are independent on network structure and the background traffic flows,while delay performance showed a greater correlation. Without the background flows, the jitteraccros pure IPv4networks is the smallest, and that through an IPv4tunnel results in the biggestvalue. In the conditions introducing background flows, the end-to-end delay in the pure IPv6network is the smallest, the jitter of the pure IPv4network reveals the smallest, and the jitter inIPv6through an IPv4tunnel indicates the biggest one. Its statistics show one fold arroundincresement in delay variance.