P2P Communication Mechanism Based on Request Forwarding in IPv4 and IPv6 Coexistence Network

Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) has significant advantages over Internet protocol version 4 (IPv4), however it will take a long time to transit from IPv4 to IPv6. Most studies on peer- to-peer (P2P) are based on a single Internet protocol (such as IPv4). And there is no effective method to achieve the communication between IPv4 peers and IPv6 peers in IPv4 and IPv6 coexistence network. This paper proposes a P2P communication mechanism based on request forwarding in IPv4 and IPv6 coexistence network without any change of current network devices. The simulation results show that the proposed P2P communication mechanism can maintain the entire P2P system stable in different periods of IPv6 evolution.