Performance Evaluation of Key IMS Operations over IPv6-Capable 3G UMTS Networks

Due to the rapid development of high bit-rate IP-based mobile networking architectures, the increasing number of end-user terminals, and the emerging convergence of different communication services with the IP world, the IPv6 protocol and the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) are considered to be the key technologies towards the realization of next generation mobile and wireless telecommunications. Both IPv6 and IMS are widely covered in the literature as self-possessed researches and studies. However, the challenge of provisioning IPv6-based IMS services over 3rd Generation (3G) Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) networks as well as related problems and performance issues were not considered so far. In this work, we try to fill this gap and raise attention on some potentially significant aspects of the integration of 3G UMTS, IMS and IPv6. Our research in this context mainly concerns the questions and challenges of the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 in all-IP 3G and beyond multimedia systems and their impacts on the performance of IMS services and applications. Different methods providing IPv6 support in existing mobile telecommunication architectures and the co-existence of IPv4/v6 during the first phases of the integration of the new Internet Protocol have substantial impact on the network and service/application performance. In order to quantify these effects, we designed and implemented a 3G UMTS testbed (including the IMS core) and compared the performance characteristics of three selected transition techniques with native IPv4 and IPv6 scenarios. Our results expose the main benefits and drawbacks of the five technologies and their actually available implementations.