Evaluation of services for IPv6 aviation networks

Today's aeronautical telecommunications network (ATN), based on the open systems interconnection (OSI) protocol standard, is lagging behind in technology as there is a lack of support for it from the industry and thereby resulting in higher cost. This has motivated to consider the next generation networking standard i.e. IPv6 as a possible means for ATN communications. In the US, NASA is actively investigating the feasibility of IPv6 based networks for the aviation needs of the United States. This paper describes an IPv6 testbed that has been setup at CNS, Inc. to deploy and test various IPv6 services. It explores several IPv6 features to identify the advantages and problems associated with them.