Comparison between IPv4 and IPv6

Salman Ali

Abstract— Internet Protocol could be a set of technical rules that defines how computers communicate over a network. There are currently 2 versions: IP version four (IPv4) and IP version vi (IPv6). IPv4 was the primary version of net Protocol to be widely used, and accounts for many of today’s net traffic. There are simply over four billion IPv4 addresses. whereas that's lots of IP addresses, it's not enough to last forever. IPv6 could be a newer numbering system that gives a way larger address pool than IPv4, amongst different options. it had been deployed in 1999 and will meet the world’s IP addressing wants well into the long run. The major distinction between IPv4 and IPv6 is that the variety of IP addresses. There are four,294,967,296 IPv4 addresses. In distinction, there are 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374, 607,431,768,211,456 IPv6 addresses. The technical functioning of the net remains an equivalent with each version and it's possible that each version can still operate simultaneously on networks well into the long run. To date, most networks that use IPv6 support each IPv4 and IPv6 addresses in their networks.

I.    INTRODUCTION

I

nternet Protocol address version four (IPv4) has been introduced in 1981 [1]. With variety of interconnected computers grows dramatically, this case results in depletion of IPv4 addresses. Consequently, a brand-new version of addressing system known as IPv6 was developed. The IPv6 recommendation for traditional track specification has started since 1995 [2], [3]. the most distinction between IPv4 and IPv6 is in their addressing formats. IPv4 uses 32-bit (4-bytes) addresses to uniquely determine nodes among the world web. IPv6 uses 128-bit (16-bytes) addresses to uniquely determine nodes among the world web. With IPv6 giant address house, it's clearly will resolve address depletion downside in IPv4.

II.    Why comparative Study?

Currently IPv6 penetration continues to be low and also the IPv4 goes to run out of addressing area, whereas within the alternative hand, a study of IPv6 net traffic [5] from June 2007 to June 2008 shown that IPv6 penetration is stagnant compared to overall net traffic. many reasons which will lead this case to happen are high value of relocation, no added income, no users, no IPv6 content and lack of IPv6 awareness. therefore, from the comparative review of IPv4 and

IPv6 that we tend to dispensed during this paper, we tend to expect that IPv6 benefits and support product that we've got signifies will increase IPv6 awareness to the readers. This paper also will be the start line of successive analysis take a look at bed that we tend to attending to perform alongside case study between University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and Malaysian analysis and Education Network (MYREN). so as to set up, perceive and style the migration from IPv4 to IPv6, we've got to properly confirm the take a look at bed design compromising of the network element part. Performance of finish-to-finish IPv4 and IPv6 are measured by using network monitoring software via straightforward Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Metrics like actual bandwidth, delay jitter and packet loss are collected and analyzed within the analysis take a look at bed and case study. This paper is very important as a result of it'll lead us to see the acceptable IPv6 support product for our next study. It additionally can have an impression to the readers or users who concern with IPv6 performance and eventually increase IPv6 penetration.

 Fig 1. IPv4 address exhaustion from 1995 to 2011. Graph shows number of available "/8" blocks, each containing 16777216 addresses

III.    Difference between IPv4 and IPv6

The variations between IPv6 and IPv4 are in 5 major areas: addressing and routing, protection, network address translation, administrative workload, and support for mobile devices. IPv6 additionally includes a vital feature: a group of doable migration and transition plans from IPv4.

Since 1994, over thirty IPv6 RFCs are revealed. Changing IP means that changing dozens of net protocols and conventions, starting from how IP addresses are stored in DNS (domain name system) and applications, to how datagrams are sent and routed over Ethernet, PPP, Token Ring, FDDI, and each different medium, to how programmer’s decision network functions.

The IETF, though, isn't therefore insane on assume that everybody goes to alter everything overnight. therefore, there are standards and protocols and procedures for the coexistence of IPv4 and IPv6: tunnelling IPv6 in IPv4, tunnelling IPv4 in IPv6, running IPv4 and IPv6 on a similar system (dual stack) for an extended amount of your time, and mixing and matching the 2 protocols in a very form of environments.

A.    Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPV4)

Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) is that the fourth version of the net Protocol (IP) and it's the primary version of the protocol to be widely deployed. beside IPv6, it's at the core of standards-based internetworking strategies of the net. IPv4 remains by way the foremost widely deployed net Layer protocol.

IPv4 is described in IETF publication RFC 791, replacing an earlier definition RFC 760. IPv4 could be a connectionless protocol to be used on packet-switched Link Layer networks e.g., Ethernet. It operates on a best effort delivery model, in that it doesn't guarantee delivery, nor will it assure correct sequencing, or avoid duplicate delivery. IPV4 doesn't contain error management or flow management mechanisms.

However, it discards knowledge if found corrupted through the checksum technique utilized in header of the datagram. These aspects, as well as knowledge integrity, are addressed by a higher layer transport protocol e.g., Transmission management Protocol. Ipv4 is that the fourth version of net protocol, however the primary one to be widely deployed.

It uses a thirty-two-bit addressing and permits for four,294,967,296 distinctive addresses. Ipv4 has four completely different category sorts, the category sorts are A, B, C, and D.

B.    Classful IP Addressing

Originally, an IP address was divided into 2 components, the network identifier represented within the most vital (highest order) octet of the address and also the host identifier using the remainder of the address. The latter was thus additionally referred to as the remainder field. This enabled the creation of a most of 256 networks. Quickly this was found to be inadequate. to beat this limit, the high order octet of the addresses was redefined to make a collection of categories of networks, in an exceedingly system that later became referred to as classful networking. The system outlined 5 categories, Class A, B, C, D, and E.

The categories A, B, and C had totally different bit lengths for the new network identification. the remainder of an address was used as previously to spot a number among a network, that meant that every network category had a special capability to deal with hosts. category D was allotted for multicast addressing and sophistication E was reserved for future applications.

CIDR address block

Description

0.0.0.0/8

Current network (only valid as source address)

10.0.0.0/8

Private network

127.0.0.0/8

Loopback

169.254.0.0/16

Link-Local

172.16.0.0/12

Private network

192.0.0.0/24

Reserved (IANA)

192.0.2.0/24

TEST-NET-1, Documentation and example code

192.88.99.0/24

IPv6 to IPv4 relay

192.168.0.0/16

Private network

198.18.0.0/15

Network benchmark tests

198.51.100.0/24

TEST-NET-2, Documentation and examples

203.0.113.0/24

TEST-NET-3, Documentation and examples

224.0.0.0/4

Multicasts (former Class D network)

240.0.0.0/4

Reserved (former Class E network)

255.255.255.255

Broadcast

C.    Classless Addressing

Classless addressing has three basic categories.

a.      Subnetting

Subnetting could be a set of techniques that you simply will use to efficiently divide the address house of a unicast address prefix for allocation among the subnets of a corporation network. The mounted portion of a unicast address prefix includes the bits up to and as well as the prefix length that have an outlined worth.

The variable portion of a unicast address prefix includes the bits beyond the prefix length that are set to zero. Subnetting is that the use of the variable portion of a unicast address prefix to form address prefixes that are a lot of economical (that waste fewer attainable addresses) for assignment to the subnets of a corporation network.

Subnetting for IPv4 was originally outlined to create higher use of the host bits for sophistication A and sophistication B IPv4 public address prefixes. The routers of the net would still regard all the nodes on the 3 subnets as being located on the address prefix. The net routers would be unaware of the subnetting being done thus need no reconfiguration. The subnetting of an address prefix isn't visible to the routers outside the network being submitted.

Subnetting for IPv4 produces a group of submitted address prefixes and their corresponding ranges of valid IPv4 addresses. By assigning submitted address prefixes that contain an applicable range of host IDs to the physical and logical subnets of an organization’s IPv4 network, network directors will use the accessible address house within the most effective manner attainable.

b.      VLSM (Variable Length Subnet Mask)

A Variable Length Subnet Mask (VLSM) could be a suggests that of allocating IP addressing resources to subnets in keeping with their individual want instead of some general network-wide rule. Of the IP routing protocols supported by Cisco, OSPF, Dual IS-IS, BGP-4, and EIGRP support “classless” or VLSM routes.

Historically, EGP relied on the IP address category definitions, and truly exchanged network numbers (8-, 16-, or twenty-four-bit fields) instead of IP addresses (32-bit numbers); RIP and IGRP exchanged network and subnet variety’s in thirty-two-bit fields, the excellence between network variety, subnet number, and host variety being a matter of convention and not exchanged within the routing protocols.

More recent protocols (see VLSM) carry either a prefix length (number of contiguous bits within the address) or subnet mask with every address, indicating what portion of the thirty-two-bit field is that the address being routed on. a straightforward example of a network using variable length subnet masks is found in Cisco engineering.

There are many switches within the engineering buildings, configured with FDDI and Ethernet interfaces and numbered so as to support sixty-two hosts on every switched subnet; in reality, maybe 15-30 hosts (printers, workstations, disk servers) are physically connected to every. However, several engineers even have ISDN or Frame Relay links to home, and a little subnet there.

These home offices generally have a router or 2 and an X terminal or workstation; they will have a computer or Macintosh still. As such, they're sometimes configured to support half-dozen hosts, and many are configured for fourteen. The purpose to point links are typically unnumbered.

c.       CIDR (Classless Inter-domain Routing)

Classless inter-domain routing is employed to decrease the quantity of routing table entries when superwetting is employed. Around 1993, Classless Inter-Domain Routing was introduced. CIDR is employed to implement super netting. Super netting permits route aggregation. CIDR introduced prefix notation that is additionally referred to as CIDR notation. Prefix/CIDR notation is currently employed in the 3 cases of classless IP addressing: subnetting, VLSM/subnets of various sizes, CIDR/super netting.

The original system of IP address categories was replaced with CIDR), and also the class-based theme was dubbed classful, in contrast. CIDR’s primary advantage is to permit repartitioning of any address house in order that smaller or larger blocks of addresses could also be allotted to users.

CIDR offers web a way of hierarchy, it's divided into international and national ISPs that are additional divided into regional ISPs, Regional ISPs are divided into native ISPs that are additional divided in blocks. The hierarchical structure created by CIDR and overseen by the net Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and its Regional web Registries (RIRs), manages the assignment of web addresses worldwide.

Each RIR maintains a publicly-searchable WHOIS database that gives data regarding IP address assignments; data from these databases plays a central role in various tools that conceive to find IP addresses geographically. The hierarchal routing is additional divided by geographical routing. In geographical routing entire address is split into few blocks. as an example, one block for America, one for Europe, one for Middle East and one for Asia.

D.    Limitations of IPV4

Since the Eighties it's been apparent that the quantity of accessible IPv4 addresses is being exhausted at a rate that wasn't initially anticipated within the style of the network. This was the driving issue for the introduction of classful networks, for the creation of CIDR addressing.

But despite these measures the IPV4 addresses are being consumed at an alarming rate and it's estimated that 2010 would be the last year for IPV4, some sources say they will last till 2012. Primary reason for IPV4 exhaustion is big growth in range of web users, mobile devices using web affiliation and continuously on devices like ADSL modems and cable modems. This brings us to the event and adoption of IPV6 as an alternate answer.

E.    Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPV6)

IPv6 stands for web Protocol version six conjointly referred to as Ingo (IP next generation) is that the second version of the net Protocol to be used usually across the virtual world.

Fig 2. IPv6 packet header

The first version was IPv4. In was designed to require an evolutionary step from IPv4. it had been not a style goal to require a radical step faraway from IPv4. Functions that work in IPv4 were kept in In.

Fig 3. Decomposition of an IPv6 address into its binary form

Functions that didn’t work were removed. The changes from IPv4 to in fall primarily into the subsequent categories:

• Expanded Routing and Addressing Capabilities
• In will increase the IP address size from thirty-two bits to 128 bits, to support a lot of levels of addressing hierarchy and a far bigger range of addressable nodes, and less complicated auto-configuration of addresses.
• The scalability of multicast routing is improved by adding a “scope” field to multicast addresses.
• A new variety of address referred to as a “anycast address” is outlined, to spot sets of nodes where a packet sent to an anycast address is delivered to at least one of the nodes. the employment of anycast addresses within the in-supply route permits nodes to regulate the trail that their traffic flows.
• Header Format Simplification
• Some IPv4 header fields are dropped or created optional, to cut back the common-case processing value of packet handling and to stay the bandwidth value of the in header as low as doable despite the increased size of the addresses. albeit the in addresses are four time longer than the IPv4 addresses, the in header is merely twice the scale of the IPv4 header.
• Improved Support for choices
• Changes within the method IP header choices are encoded permits for a lot of economical forwarding, less stringent limits on the length of choices, and bigger flexibility for introducing new choices within the future.
• Quality-of-Service Capabilities
• A new capability is added to enable the labelling of packets belonging to explicit traffic “flows” that the sender requests special handling, like non-default quality of service or “real- time” service.
• Authentication and Privacy Capabilities
• In includes the definition of extensions which offer support for authentication, information integrity, and confidentiality. this can be included as a basic component of In and can be included in all implementations.
• The In protocol consists of 2 elements, the essential in header and in extension headers.

F.    Advantages

With such a large address house, ISPs can have sufficient IP addresses to allocate enough addresses each to each} client so every IP device encompasses an actually distinctive address – whether or not it’s behind a firewall or not. NAT (network address translation) has become an awfully common technique to handle the shortage of IP addresses. sadly, NAT doesn’t work alright for several web applications, starting from recent dependable, like NFS and DNS, to newer applications like cluster conferencing.

NAT has conjointly been an impediment for business-to-business direct network connections, requiring baroque and elaborate address translators to create everything work reliably, scaling poorly, and providing a highly vulnerable single purpose of failure.

One of the goals of IPv6′s address house growth is to create NAT unnecessary, improving total connectivity, reliability, and suppleness. IPv6 can re-establish transparency and end-to-end traffic across the web. The new IPv6 addresses are giant and cumbersome to handle, thus IPv6 reduces the number of individuals who ought to scan and write them.

A second major goal of IPv6 is to scale back the whole-time which individuals ought to pay configuring and managing systems. An IPv6 system will participate in “stateless” auto configuration, where it creates a guaranteed-unique IP address by combining its LAN MAC address with a prefix provided by the network router – DHCP isn't required.

Of course, DHCP continues to be helpful for alternative parameters, like DNS servers, and is supported as DHCPv6 where required. IPv6 conjointly offers a middle ground between the 2 extremes with protocols like SLP (“Service Location Protocol”), which can build the lives of network managers easier. High-bandwidth multimedia and fault tolerance applications are the main focus of the fourth major goal of IPv6. Multimedia applications will cash in of multicast: the transmission of one datagram to multiple receivers.

Although IPv4 has some multicast capabilities, these are optional and not each router and host support them. With IPv6, multicast could be a demand. IPv6 conjointly defines a replacement quite service, known as “anycast.” Like multicast, anycast has teams of nodes that send and receive packets. however, when a packet is shipped to an anycast cluster in IPv6, it's solely delivered to at least one of the members of the cluster. This new capability is very applicable during a fault-tolerant environment: internet servers and DNS servers might all have the benefit of IPv6′s anycast technology.

Another side of VPNs engineered into IPv6 is QoS (Quality of Service). IPv6 supports an equivalent QoS options as IPv4, as well as the Differ indication, in addition as a replacement 20-bit traffic flow field. though the utilization of this a part of IPv6 isn't outlined, it's provided as a solid base to create QoS protocols. The fifth major goal of IPv6 is VPNs, virtual non-public networks. The new IPsec security protocols, ESP (encapsulating security protocol) and AH (authentication header) are add-ons to IPv4. IPv6 builds-in and needs these protocols, which can mean that secure networks are easier to create and deploy in an IPv6 world.

IV.    Analysis

Theoretically IPv6 has uncountable blessings compared to IPv4. From this study we all know that there's otherwise to adapt whether or not a network equipment supports IPv6 or not, that is by pertaining to the IPv6 prepared emblem program check list. Another result of this paper is that we have a tendency to should begin formulating our IPv6 migration strategy thanks to IPv4 can deplete thus soon. Through product info gathering that we have a tendency to distributed during this study, we have a tendency to noted that there's inconsistency between theoretical IPv6 performances against actual IPv6 performance. as an example, a twin stack IPv4/IPv6 router have higher IPv4 packet forwarding performance as compared to IPv6. this case leads us to hold out more check bed and live MYREN network case study to check the particular performance of IPv4 and IPv6 network. we've chosen 3Com MSR20-21 as multi services router to check out as a result of it's the very best score from the IPv6 support product comparison that we've done. identical product comparison for home user can also be done by using similar technique, however we have a tendency to didn't compare the merchandise for home user here as a result of we have a tendency to don't seem to be aiming to use it during this study and our next analysis check bed. Limitation that we have a tendency to encounter throughout this study is a few of product technical knowledge are solely on the market to reseller and partners and not open to public, therefore limit our comparison metrics that we will use.

V.    Conclusion

There are lots IPv6 benefits over IPv4 that we have a tendency to review during this paper. one amongst them is massive address area. With IPv4 projected to exhaust within the next few years, we've got no alternative selection except to migrate to IPv6. during this paper we have a tendency to additionally illustrate regarding the IPv6 prepared brand Program which may prove that lots of IPv6 support product has been created, tested, confirmed and prepared to be used. From the IPv6 support product comparison, we have a tendency to expect that it will offer clear insight on the way to compare and opt for applicable product. For future work, another necessary IPv6 space that we have a tendency to reaching to explore are the way to improve the end-to-end IPv6 performance via a check bed and MYREN case study to prove that IPv6 is far higher compared to IPv4 and may meet future performance demand.

Acknowledgment

There are a number of people without whom this research might not have been written, and to whom I am greatly indebted.

I would like to express my deep and sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Lecturer Arum No sheen, Department of Electronics Engineering. Her vast knowledge and her logical way of thinking have been of great value for me. Her understanding, encouraging and personal guidance have provided a good basis for the present thesis. Thank you, my family, for all of your time and prays that were for me. I will never forget it. Finally, to my friends, thank you for being so understanding and patiently standing by me throughout this long process. Friends, I am finally done.

References

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