IPv6 – The next generation Internet Protocol
1. Introduction
Under the
Action Plan eEurope 2005, it was recognised by the Commission that “IPv6 is
essential on the road leading to network-based technologies, products and
services that will contribute to an "everywhere", user-centric
Information Society”.
This gave rise
to the European Commission's Communication to the Council and the European
Parliament (COM/2002/96) – “Next Generation Internet – priorities for action in
migrating to the new Internet protocol IPv6”, which creates a context for the
EU Members to take action in focussing on broadband availability and the
development of IPv6. These developments require a concerted action aiming at
the structuring, consolidation and integration of European efforts on IPv6,
notably through:
1. Increased support towards IPv6 in public
networks and services;
2. The establishment and launch of educational
programmes on IPv6;
3. The adoption of IPv6 through awareness
raising campaigns;
4. The continued stimulation of the Internet
take-up across the European Union;
5. Increased support to IPv6 activities in the
Framework’s Programme;
6. The strengthening of the support towards
the IPv6 enabling of national and European Research Networks;
7. An active contribution towards the
promotion of IPv6 standards work;
8. The integration of IPv6 in all strategic
plans concerning the use of new Internet services.
In order to
take some of the proposed actions, various European Countries have created an
IPv6 Task Force group open to the different market players, including
manufactures, operators, providers, applications developers, academic
institutions, etc.
Following the
European Commission's Communication, the present document explains the
different aspects involved in IPv6 implementation that could lead to guidelines
on the priorities for implementing and adopting IPv6 in public networks and
services. The consequences for the market parties, including the users are also
discussed.
2 . IPv6
– The next generation of IP
“In the general
sense, an internet is a computer network that connects several networks. The
Internet is a publicly available internationally interconnected system of
computers plus the information and services provided to their users using a
TCP/IP suite of packet switching communications protocols[1]”.
To interconnect
two or more computer networks it is necessary to have a routing device to
exchange traffic, and steer traffic via several different nodes on the path
across a network to its destination. The devices used to interconnect different
networks are routers. Others devices with specific functions like gateways or
bridge are also used. All network elements such as routers, switches, gateways,
bridges, LAN cards, need to have at least one IP address.
Figure
1: Use of routers
Different IP
packet networks are normally interconnected by Routers that have added
functionality to permit accounting between the interconnected networks. In
other configurations they act also as interworking devices between different
protocols.
The new version
of IPv6 was conceived to replace the previous IPv4 standard that was adopted
two decades ago as a robust, easily implemented standard.
However IPv4 is
being used successfully to support the communications systems in the emerging
information society and has been updated to extend its useful life (e.g. NAT
mechanism, IPsec protocol), MPLS, Tunnelling). However its capabilities are
somewhat limited in the following areas:
-
Exhaustion
of the IPv4 address space;
-
Growth
of the Internet and the maintenance of routing tables
-
Auto-configuration
-
Mobility
-
Security
-
Quality
of service
and the purpose
of developing |IPv6 is to overcome these limitations.
The areas where
IPv6 offers improvement are:
-
Expansion capacity for addressing and routing – the IP address space is expanded from 32
bits to 128 bits, enabling a greatly increased number of address combinations,
levels of hierarchical address organization and auto-configuration of
addresses;
-
Simplified header format – the IPv6 basic header is only 40 bytes
long in spite of the greatly increased address allocation;
-
Enhanced options support – several different, separate “extension
headers” are defined, which enable flexible support for options without all of
the header structure having to be interpreted and manipulated at every router
point along the way;
-
Quality of service – the Flow Label and the Priority fields
in the IPv6 header are used by a host to identify packets that need special
handling by IPv6 routers, such as non-default quality of service or
"real-time" service. This capability is important in that it needs to
support applications that require some degree of consistent throughput, delay,
and jitter;
-
Auto-configuration – adds the concept of dynamic assignment
of part of the address space, based on geographic and topographic features of a
given physical connection
-
Elimination of the need for NATs (network
address translators)
– since the IP address space supports
approximately 3.4 x 1038 possible combinations, the need
for private addressing schemes behind NATs is unnecessary on grounds of address
conservation;
-
Improved security with mandatory IPsec
implementation – IPv6
provides for integral support for authentication, privacy and data integrity
measures, by requiring all implementations to support these features;
-
Mobility - mobile computers are assigned with at least two
IPv6 addresses whenever they are roaming away from their home network. One (the
home address) is permanent; the other (the IPv6 link-local address) is used
temporarily. In addition, the mobile node will typically auto-configure a
globally-routable address at each new point of attachment. Every IPv6 router
supports encapsulation, so every router is capable of serving as a home agent
on the network(s) to which it is attached.
IP
addressing architecture
An IP address
is a binary number, which identifies any user’s computer directly connected to
the Internet. An IPv4 address consists of 32 bits, but it is usually
represented by a group of four numbers (8 bits hexadecimal), from 0 to 255
ranges and separated by full stops. An example of this representation is showed
bellow:
124.32.43.4
Several domain
names can also be linked to the same IP address, in effect similar to having
more than one name for the same person. The format of the IPv4 header is showed
in figure 2:
Figure
2: IPv4 Structure
The most
recognized change from IPv4 to IPv6 is the length of network addresses. The
IPv6 addresses have 128 bits length. The 128 bits provide approximately 3.4x1038
separate values. An IPv6 address consists of eight numbers in the hexadecimal
format, from 0 to 65535 (decimal) ranges and separated by a colon “:”. An
example of this new representation is showed following:
FECA:0000:234A:0043:AB45:FFFF:9A3E:000B
3 Services
and Equipments
The
"converging" new generation communication networks are using and
planning to use an IP based network infrastructure with multi-functional
end-devices, always on, always reachable peer-to-peer, with mobility, quality
of service and end-to-end security. Even non telecom industries such as music,
radio and television will be supported in the IP environment. There are
applications that need or will benefit from IPv6 such:
·
Mobile
broadband IP;
·
Mobile
IP broadcast;
·
Peer
to peer VoIP;
·
Digital
radio;
·
iTV
and IPTV;
·
Grids;
·
P2P
multiplayer games;
·
RFID;
·
Control
networks;
·
Remote
manufacturing systems;
·
Sensor
networks;
·
Microsoft
(native support of IPv6 in the next version of Windows – Longhorn).
There are also
a few technologies that will support the migration to IPv6 like:
·
Powerline
Communication;
·
Wi-Fi;
·
Wi-Max;
·
ZigBee;
·
Unlicensed
Mobile Access (UMA).
