IPv4 - IPv6 Coexistence Technique

Abstract

An IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) - IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) coexistence technique is essential for the IPv4 to IPv6 translation period as it is expected to take a long time to deploy IPv6 to all available devices. As one of the IPv4 - IPv6 coexistence techniques, an IPv4 - IPv6 translation will allow any client connected to the IPv6-only network to communicate to an IPv4 host. However the efficiency of any IPv4 - IPv6 translator has not been recognized as an important metric to be considered even though most organizations that will make use of an IPv4 - IPv6 translator should be interested in the best translation technique based on its performance and stability. The purpose of this study is to understand the fundamental structure and behavior of IPv4 - IPv6 translators and investigate the efficiency of currently implemented open source IPv4 - IPv6 translation techniques. In this study, we have chosen two IPv4 - IPv6 translators and a HTTP proxy to compare their efficiency based on the Round-Trip time of packets against the native IPv4 and IPv6 connection. The behavior of each packet translator and HTTP proxy is observed to compare efficiency while it handles a variable number of simultaneous connections. Through this study, we will understand how each translator and HTTP proxy can be used to enable IPv4 - IPv6 communication and how efficient these translation techniques are when it is deployed within a simple network.