A Performance Study on REAchability Protocol in Large Scale IPv6 Networks

Shim6 is a host-centric multihoming solution for IPv6 networks which has been chosen by the IETF as a multihoming solution for the future Internet. Shim6 employs REAchability Protocol (REAP) for failure detection and recovery. REAP enables multi-addressed hosts which are involved in a communication to detect and recover path failures without breaking the transport layer sessions. One concern about deploying shim6 is the performance of REAP in large networks like campus or enterprise networks. We modeled and simulated this protocol by using stochastic activity networks (SAN) and performed an analysis of its performance. This paper presents the results of the simulation. We also investigated the effect of send timer and initial probes on the performance.