Performance Evaluation of Tunneling Mechanisms in IPv6 Transition: A Detailed Review

It has been quite a long time since we heard of IPv4 address space depletion problem. Today new generation internet protocol, IPv6, has been adopted widely to fulfill the needs of rapidly growing internet population. Nonetheless, many organizations and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) still adhere to IPv4 infrastructure. The co-existence of IPV4 and IPV6 networks has contributed to copious issues related to successful communication between hosts. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) suggested numerous transition mechanisms (Dual Stack, Tunneling and Header Translation) to enable communication between hosts working on incompatible network layer protocols-IPv4 and IPv6. Tunneling mechanism enables seamless communication between dual stack nodes of IPV4 and IPv6 network clouds and hence it is widely implemented. This paper discusses various tunneling mechanisms as proposed by IETF with comparative assessment based on different criteria identified. It also addresses the security concerns related to them and evaluates their performance using simulation.