Non-Fragmented Network Flow Design Analysis: Comparison IPv4 with IPv6 Using Path MTU Discovery

Thiago Lucas,Gabriel Ferreira,Rychard Plachta,Kelton Costa,Maycon Ferreira

doi:10.3390/computers9020054

Abstract

With the expansion in the number of devices that connect to the Internet, a new area, known as the Internet of Things (IoT), appears. It was necessary to migrate the IPv4 protocol by the IPv6 protocol, due to the scarcity of IPv4 addresses. One of the advances of IPv6 concerning its predecessor was the Path MTU Discovery protocol, in which this work aims to demonstrate its effectiveness in a virtual environment. Employing the VirtualBox virtualization program, a scenario is defined with fifteen machines with the Debian operating system and two network scenarios, one using the IPv4 network configuration and the other using the IPv6 network configuration. In both situations, the MTU values of all machines were changed to perform the performance tests while using UDP transport traffic. The fragmentation of packets demonstrated the effectiveness of the Path MTU Discovery protocol. The results achieved point to a stabilization in bandwidth and jitter when Path MTU Discovery is used and to change when it is no longer applied, proving its effectiveness.

Highlights

According to Comer [1], the Global Internet started, when the Advanced Research and ProjectsAgency (ARPA) began to adopt the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)/IP protocol on computers that were connected to its network.in Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4), the increase in the number of people connected to the Internet was not expected, causing their addresses to be increasingly close to being exhausted.Some measures were created to delay this exhaustion, such as Network Address Translation (NAT), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), and Virtual Host.To the Internet, there are two types of addressing, IPv4 and IPv6
With the setup of the scenario in both the IPv4 network protocol and the IPv6 network protocol, the stage of testing packet forwarding and collecting performance results in the network flow began, and comparisons were made between the obtained results and presented as conclusions regarding the efficiency of the IPv6 Path MTU Discovery protocol
With the scenario in the IPv4 network protocol ready for the packet forwarding tests for network flow analysis, which were carried out with Iperf, a tool suggested by RFC 6349 (2011)

Summary

Introduction

According to Comer [1], the Global Internet started, when the Advanced Research and Projects. Agency (ARPA) began to adopt the TCP/IP protocol on computers that were connected to its network. In Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4), the increase in the number of people connected to the Internet was not expected, causing their addresses to be increasingly close to being exhausted. Some measures were created to delay this exhaustion, such as Network Address Translation (NAT), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), and Virtual Host. To the Internet, there are two types of addressing, IPv4 and IPv6. According to Torres [2], they have the main function of sending each computer or device connected to the Internet, where there are no same addresses. In 2010, IPv4 was used by 99% of computers globally.

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Conclusion