ISSN (Print) : 0974-6846

Indian Journal of Science and Technology, Vol 9(20), DOI: 10.17485/ijst/2016/v9i20/90005, May 2016 ISSN (Online) : 0974-5645

Performance Analysis of IPv4

to IPv6 Transition Methods
C. V. Ravi Kumar*, Kakumanilakshmi Venkatesh, Marri Vinay Sagar and Kala Praveen Bagadi
VIT University, Vellore - 632014, Tamil Nadu, India; [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected]

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

not able to accommodate the 6 billion potential internet

1.  Introduction
users and their devices.
In the burgeoning world of smart devices, people are Not only the end users, all networking infrastructure
using copious number of devices. All these devices components such as servers, routers, DNS, ADC, firewalls,
needed to be connected, for which each device is given switches all requires IP addresses to establish internet
with an IP address1,2. IPv4 and IPv6 are two well-known network. So there is a great necessity to shift to other
and prevailing internet protocols. Most of the existing technology that solves the problem of addresses. Soon
organizations, businesses are well accustomed to IPv4. an interesting concept of Network Address Translation
Faster growth of digital world left the IPv4 technology (NAT)3,4 came into existence. It is a way to associate or
into extinction since it is not able to provide sufficient IPs map an independent network to a single IP address to
i.e., IPv4 address is only 32 bit long and it can accom- expand the existence of more nodes on internet. It also
modate only 232 i.e., 4.3 billion nodes. With the advent of brings up the concept of public and private IP addresses.
Internet of things, new and easily usable devices, IPv4 is Though it seems to be the promising solution, it brought

*Author for correspondence

 Performance Analysis of IPv4 to IPv6 Transition Methods

many complexities, security issues, and other limitations. 2.2  Tunneling

So it showed a path for IPv6to come into existence5,6. It
IPv6 infrastructure will be deployed some parts at a time.
is the most powerful Internet Protocol ever existed7.
In many pragmatic situations, the functional IPv4 infra-
It eliminates most of the limitations and also provides
structure exists in between functional IPv6 infrastructure.
more sophisticated encryption for best security to the
It is really difficult to establish communication between
data8. Though IPv6 has got some other vulnerabilities9,10,
two IPv6 only networks over other IP versions. Similarly
the important features like header which is made light
we find, IPv6-only network in between IPv4 networks
weight11 in compared to its previous versions to provide
and creates a predicament at times. So tunneling provides
robust12 and easy data transfer13.
a solution through which one version data packets can be
It is not just as simple as saying to migrate from one
sent or tunneled through the other versions’ functional
version to another. It involves huge money to change the
infrastructure16. For example tunneling can provide a
software, hardware components to migrate to IPv6. It is
method to make use of existing IPv4 infrastructure to
also the matter of time, for the network to transform into
carry IPv6 data packets. Here IPv6 packets are encapsu-
IPv6. So there should be some proper transition techniques
lated within the information part of IPv4 packet17.
till IPv6 occupies the entire existing internet space14. There
Tunneling is used and implemented in myriad of ways
are many transition techniques available but Tunneling,
i.e. in between router and router, host and router, host
Dual Stack, Translation techniques are the major players.
and host, router to host. Some of the important tunneling
This paper gives a candid analysis of all these major transla-
mechanisms are: 1. Entrance node of the tunnel create an
tion techniques and provides proper report of advantages,
IPv4 header and send the encapsulated IPv6 packet and at
disadvantages and best fit of each technique when different
the exit of the tunnel18, the header is removed and packet
scenarios are taken into consideration.
is decapsulated to retain its original form of IPv6. Tunnel
can be either manually or dynamically configured19.
2.  Transition Stratagies
2.3  Translation
2.1  Dual Stack/Dual IP Configuration This translation concept is very prominent because of the
The easiest way for IPv6 nodes to co-exist with IPv4-only NAT (Network Address Translation), as an extension of
nodes is by directly providing the IPv4 implementation. the IPv4 network. The basic theory of NAT and the other
IPv6nodes which provide both IPv4 and IPv6 implemen- address translation techniques used for IPv4 and IPv6
tations are called “IPv6/IPv4 nodes”. These nodes have the transitions are very much similar. This is an innovative
capacity to exchange both IPv4 and IPv6 data-packets. approach to establish communication between IPv4-only
They can simultaneously send IPv4 packets to IPv4-only nodes to communicate with IPv6-only nodes. Though
nodes and Ipv6 packets to IPv6-only nodes. So, there exist the basic concept remains the same for NAT in IPv4 and
two stacks, one for IPv4 and the other for IPv6 in a single IPv4/v6 transition, v4/v6 transition technique involves little
router. Since the nodes support both IP v4 and v6 proto- more complexity and integration of different concepts.
cols, these are configured with both IP addresses15. There are different methods through which the transla-
Though every Dual-Stack node is equipped with both tion occurs. In this paper we discuss about NAT-PT and
IPv4 and IPv6 stacks, one of these stacks can be made NAT-64 only.
disabled when required since both the stacks can exist NAT-PT (Network Address Translation-Protocol
independently. These use DHCP or other IPv4 mecha- Translation) has great potential to translate protocol ser-
nisms to get their v4 address and SLAAC (Stateless vices such as DNS (Domain Name Service), FTP (File
Address Auto Configuration) or DHCPv6 to acquire their Transfer Protocol), ICMP (Internet Control Messaging
v6 address. Protocol)20, etc. along with address translation capability.
DNS resolver has capability of handling AAAA records The ALG (Application Layer Gateway) is the key compo-
(IPv6 compatible) and A records (IPv4 compatible). And nent used for the above mentioned translation services.
on request to DNS and based on the preferences set, DNS Though, stupendous NAT-PT provided vast services,
sends either IPv4/v6 address or both to the client. ALG introduced a large number of issues21.

2 Vol 9 (20) | May 2016 | www.indjst.org Indian Journal of Science and Technology
 C. V. Ravi Kumar, Kakumanilakshmi Venkatesh, Marri Vinay Sagar and Kala Praveen Bagadi

So, a new methodology NAT64 and DNS64 came into

existence that uncoupled the application layer translation
and address translation functionalities of NAT-PT.
NAT64 uses NAT64 gateway, which translates IPv6
address to IPv4 or vice-versa. An IPv6 node fixes IPv4
address with which it wants to communicate using host
part of IPv6 and forwards the packet to resulting address.
Generally, a mapping is made between Ipv4 and Ipv6
addresses using NAT64 gateway. It is done either manu-
ally or automatically. DNS64 resembles a DNS server
which can synthesizes AAAA records (IPv6 resource
records) from A records (IPv4 resource records). This is
implemented by encoding the retrieved IPv4 address to
IPv6 format. Figure 1.  Dual stack topology.

3.  Implementation and Analysis

There are myriad of software network simulators avail-
able in the market. Cisco VIRL, OPNET, Riverbed, Cisco
Packet Tracer, GNS3, etc are some famous simulator
softwares. Each has its own advantages. In this paper we
implemented the various network topologies using GNS3
(3.0.1) network simulator which is one of the most accu-
rate, agile, vendor-agnostic software and it has also got
copious networking components. Moreover, it provides
a great GUI with which any complex topologies can be
implemented easily. All the analysis of the topologies has
been carried out using Wireshark packet analyzer.
Figure 2.  Trace route of IPv4 ping and IPv6 ping from R1
Wireshark is an open source, free and user-friendly
to R8 lpb.
packet analyzer software which is generally used for trou-
bleshooting, protocol development, and analysis of data.
Similar topologies are built for each transition technique routers are c3640. All the routers are configured with
i.e., Dual stack, tunneling and translation. A combination their respective loopback networks to represent the real
of cisco 3640, cisco 3725, cisco 7200 routers are used for time scenario.
routers and set of Qemu hosts as end Linux PCs and end The Trace Route helps to find the different routes
servers are used in the implementations. the data-packet takes to reach the destination. It also
finds the RTT(Round–trip time) of a data-packet to hit
all intermediate routers. RTT is the time taken for the
3.1  Dual-Stack Implmentation packet to be sent from the source to that particular host
A ten router Dual Stack topology has been implemented and get acknowledgement from that host to source. The
with three virtual hosts as shown in the Figure 1. All upper portion of the Figure 2 gives the details about the
the routers are connected using Fast Ethernet cables ICMPv411 sent from R1 to R8.TraceRoute command
and serial cables. All routers are configured with IPv4 sends three datagrams at a time and so in the Figure,
and IPv6 addresses i.e., all routers used in this network three different times are seen. Each time period repre-
are dual stack /dual IP configured routers. Routers R10 sents the time taken by that particular datagram to reach
is c7200 routers which are more robust and can handle that particular host. In most cases, RTT is treated as
traffic effectively. R3, R6, R9 are c 3725, whereas the end latency. So, the latency of IPv4 packet to reach R8 from

Vol 9 (20) | May 2016 | www.indjst.org Indian Journal of Science and Technology 3
 Performance Analysis of IPv4 to IPv6 Transition Methods

R1 is 1945msec (avg.). Whereas, the lower part of the that link for the analysis. For better understanding, only
Figure 2 displays the trace route details of R1 to R8. ICMP v4 and v6 are individually filtered and analyzed on
It is clearly evident that IPv6 is having less latency and the parameters throughput and efficiency.
it is about 962msec (avg.), which is nearly half of that In networking, throughput is defined as the amount
of IPv4’s time. One inference that can be drawn from of data transferred from one node to another in a given
the above results is that with the distance increased, the time interval. Whereas, the efficiency is coined as the
performance of IPv6 is better in terms of latency in this number of packets successfully reached the destination.
scenario. Another important parameters to analyze are It is observed from the Figure 3(a) that the throughput of
throughput and efficiency of the data. the ICMPv4 packets is 0.003Mbits/s with 100% efficiency
As mentioned in the beginning of the section, all in this network scenario. Results of ICMPv6 in Figure
the analysis is carried in wireshark packet analyzer. For 3(b), shows that throughput is almost similar to that of
the analysis in this topology, we captured the data pass- ICMPv4 traffic. Figure 3(c) provides the comparative
ing through the interface f0/0 of R10. 3001:1:3:2/64 or analysis of ICMPv4 and ICMPv6 packets’ throughput in
10.1.3.0/24 link. Considerable traffic is generated across log scale over time.

Figure 3.  (a) IPv4 ICMP packet throughput. (b) IPv6 ICMP packet throughput. (c) IPv6 and IPv4 ICMP packet throughput
comparative analysis.

4 Vol 9 (20) | May 2016 | www.indjst.org Indian Journal of Science and Technology
 C. V. Ravi Kumar, Kakumanilakshmi Venkatesh, Marri Vinay Sagar and Kala Praveen Bagadi

3.2  Tunneling Implmentation carried with 100% efficiency and with 0.003 Mbits/sec.
Similar to that, Figure 7(b) gives a insight on the v4 tunnel
The Figure 4 shows the tunneling topology with ten routers
where the v4 traffic is carried in v6 packets. Data through-
similar to that of the dual stack topology. Here R1, R4, R7
put and efficiency are same as that of the above.
are IPv4 configured and have IPv4 loopbacks configured
to it. R2, R5, R8 areIPv6 configured and they are assigned
with their respective loopbacks. R3, R6, R9, R10 are
­tunnel initiators and each of these have IPv4 loopbacks.
This topology contains two IPv6 tunnels for allowing v6
traffic over v4 network and one IPv4 tunnel for allow-
ing v4 traffic over v6 traffic. First IPv6 tunnel is present
between R3 and R10, second in between R9 and R10.
The IPv4 tunnel is located between the R6 and R10. The
traffic is generated throughout the network and the data is
captured for interfaces s0/0 and s0/1 of R10 in order to get Figure 5.  Trace Route between R1 and R4 lpb.
the analysis of both v4 and v6 tunnels.
In the Figure 5 the third hop in the list i.e., 10.1.6.1 is
v4 over v6 tunnel. The total latency of the IPv4 packet
over v6 network is 575 msec (avg). The second hop in
the Figure 6, i.e., 3001:1:A::2 represents the IPv6 tunnel
over v4 network. The latency of the v6 packet over v4
network is being 648 msec (avg) which is nearly same
as that of v4 packet latency.
The Figure 7(a) lucidly depicts the v6 traffic is carried
as v4 traffic as the v6 tunnel is present there and data is Figure 6.  Trace Route between R2 and R5 lpb.

Figure 4.  Tunneling topology.

Vol 9 (20) | May 2016 | www.indjst.org Indian Journal of Science and Technology 5
 Performance Analysis of IPv4 to IPv6 Transition Methods

Figure 7.  (a) ICMP packet throughput analysis over v6 tunnel. (b) ICMP packet throughput analysis over v4 tunnel.

Figure 8.  Translation topology.

3.3  Translation Implmentation their corresponding conjugate addresses. Every time

when v4/v6 packet comes to the router, then the address
A similar configuration to that of above techniques is of the packet is changed to respective v6/v4 address as
chosen to compare and topology which is shown in Fig- in the translation table. These translations can be either
ure 8. Only router R10 is configured manually for NAT- automatically configured or done manually.
PT translation. So, the address translation from v4 to v6 The Figure 10 shows 97% efficiency in their pings
or vice-versa happens only at R10 and the data transfer when 9809 packets are sent from R1 to R8. It shows bet-
continues. Translation table looks like as shown in Fig- ter performance i.e., 99% efficiency when less number of
ure 9. The translation table consists of IP addresses and packets are sent. However, the RTT is remained same in

6 Vol 9 (20) | May 2016 | www.indjst.org Indian Journal of Science and Technology
 C. V. Ravi Kumar, Kakumanilakshmi Venkatesh, Marri Vinay Sagar and Kala Praveen Bagadi

both cases which nearly 1050 msec(avg). In this case Trace drawback found during translation is IPv4 configured R4
Route is able to show only the intermediate nodes till NAT was not able to ping IPv6 configured R5 since both the
server because of the address translation. In the above sce- routers are connected to the same interface of NAT con-
nario IPv6 to IPv4 address translation took place at router figured R10, which translates and redirects the traffic only
R10. So, an IPv4 configured R1 is able to ping IPv6 con- to other interfaces.
figured R8. Similarly any version IP address can ping any
version IP address with the help of NAT-64 and NAT-PT.
The Figures 11(a) and 11(b), shows the analysis of data
captured at interfaces s0/1 and s0/0 of R10 router. Figure
11(a) shows the traffic when data from IPv4 R1 is sent to
IPv6 R8. 94.7% of the v4 traffic is converted to IPv6 and
sent with the throughput of 0.03 Mbits/sec and similarly
there is only 92% efficiency found in the conversion of v6
traffic to IPv4 with throughput of 0.03 Mbits/sec. Another

Figure 11.  (a) Throughput and efficiency analysis at int

s0/1of R10. (b) Throughput and efficiency analysis at int
Figure 9.  NAT translation table at R10. s0/0of R10.

Figure 10.  Ping and traceroute from R1 to R8.

Vol 9 (20) | May 2016 | www.indjst.org Indian Journal of Science and Technology 7
 Performance Analysis of IPv4 to IPv6 Transition Methods

4.  Conclusion 5. Wu P. Cui Y. Wu J, Liu J. Transition from IPv4 to IPv6: A

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