BGP-EAM: BGP Extension for Dynamic Stateless IP/ICMP Translation

IPv6 has seen widespread deployment in recent years, and various techniques have been designed to aid transition from IPv4 to IPv6 without interrupting current services and promote development of IPv6 applications. In particular, stateless IP/ICMP translation has been popular among service providers. However, it lacks a dynamic control plane mechanism for the translation parameters and policies, which complicates management for large-scale deployment and hinders its usage in dynamic scenarios. This paper gives the design of a flexible, ready-to-deploy control mechanism for stateless IP/ICMP translation based on BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) and EAM (Explicit Address Mappings), and defines the behavior of translators enhanced with such mechanism. The paper then analyses its ability to enable coordination between multiple translators, and between translators and other network components. Finally, the paper evaluates the effectiveness of the promoted mechanism through several experiments, and provides reference implementation of BGP-EAM speakers and translators.