Internet Protocol Version 6 Network Research Articles

A Review Paper on IPv4 and IPv6: A Comprehensive Survey

Even though more customers are regularly coming to the Internet, IPv4 addresses have been reduced by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and have been deactivated in domain name registries (RIRs). IPv6, being the sole important next-generation Internet protocol, has yet to be fully developed and deployed, owing to the lack of a scheme that might address the transfer of IPv4 resources to IPv6 networks as well as collective communication between the two incompatible protocols. The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet protocol version 4 (TCP/IPv4) addresses have been reported as being on the verge of collapsing, while the next generation Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is being identified on a regular basis. Among other advantages, IPv6 provides a significantly wider address space, better address design, and more security. IPv6 distribution necessitates a thorough and meticulous setup in order to avoid network disturbance and reap the benefits of IPv6. Because of the problems with IPv4, IPv6 is currently becoming increasingly popular among organizations, businesses, and Internet Service Providers (ISP). This paper we will explores the evolution of Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4), its key features, challenges, and limitations, and examines how Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) addresses these issues. Additionally, we will highlight the key differences between the two protocols and discuss the transition process from IPv4 to IPv6.

Hybridizing flower pollination algorithm with particle swarm optimization for enhancing the performance of IPv6 intrusion detection system

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent iteration of IP, designed to accommodate hundreds of thousands of devices with unique IP addresses. IPv6 introduces new features, such as the Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) and Address Auto-configuration Scheme. For its effective operation, IPv6 relies on several protocols, including ICMPv6, which carries significant responsibilities. Similar to IPv4, IPv6 is susceptible to various attacks, including newer types like DDoS attacks executed via ICMPv6 messages, posing serious security and financial threats. Consequently, an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is essential to safeguard against these attacks. IDS continuously evolve to incorporate features that can accurately detect such threats. However, feature selection strategies, particularly bio-inspired algorithms, often yield incorrect subsets of features. During machine learning processes, these inaccuracies impede the detection accuracy of DDoS attacks using ICMPv6. Many Optimization Search Algorithms become trapped in local minima and fail to consider multi-objective approaches, resulting in suboptimal feature selection. To address this, optimizing a bio-inspired algorithm within an IPv6 network has been proposed. Specifically, hybridizing the MFPA algorithm with the PSO algorithm is suggested to enhance detection accuracy. The selected features are used to train the dataset with a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. The proposed approach is evaluated using the ICMPv6 dataset on various attacks, demonstrating superior classification accuracy of 97.99 %. It also reduced the number of features from 19 to 8, showcasing its efficiency.

IPv6 flood attack detection based on epsilon greedy optimized Q learning in single board computer

<span lang="EN-US">Internet of things is a technology that allows communication between devices within a network. Since this technology depends on a network to communicate, the vulnerability of the exposed devices increased significantly. Furthermore, the use of internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) as the successor to internet protocol version 4 (IPv4) as a communication protocol constituted a significant problem for the network. Hence, this protocol was exploitable for flooding attacks in the IPv6 network. As a countermeasure against the flood, this study designed an IPv6 flood attack detection by using epsilon greedy optimized Q learning algorithm. According to the evaluation, the agent with epsilon 0.1 could reach 98% of accuracy and 11,550 rewards compared to the other agents. When compared to control models, the agent is also the most accurate compared to other algorithms followed by neural network (NN), K-nearest neighbors (KNN), decision tree (DT), naive Bayes (NB), and support vector machine (SVM). Besides that, the agent used more than 99% of a single central processing unit (CPU). Hence, the agent will not hinder internet of things (IoT) devices with multiple processors. Thus, we concluded that the proposed agent has high accuracy and feasibility in a single board computer (SBC).</span>

Machine and deep learning techniques for detecting internet protocol version six attacks: a review

<span lang="EN-US">The rapid development of information and communication technologies has increased the demand for internet-facing devices that require publicly accessible internet protocol (IP) addresses, resulting in the depletion of internet protocol version 4 (IPv4) address space. As a result, internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) was designed to address this issue. However, IPv6 is still not widely used because of security concerns. An intrusion detection system (IDS) is one example of a security mechanism used to secure networks. Lately, the use of machine learning (ML) or deep learning (DL) detection models in IDSs is gaining popularity due to their ability to detect threats on IPv6 networks accurately. However, there is an apparent lack of studies that review ML and DL in IDS. Even the existing reviews of ML and DL fail to compare those techniques. Thus, this paper comprehensively elucidates ML and DL techniques and IPv6-based distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Additionally, this paper includes a qualitative comparison with other related works. Moreover, this work also thoroughly reviews the existing ML and DL-based IDSs for detecting IPv6 and IPv4 attacks. Lastly, researchers could use this review as a guide in the future to improve their work on DL and ML-based IDS.</span>

An experimental study for the performance assessment of the DNS server architecture on IPv6 network

In this paper, an experimental investigation is conducted to study the performance of the educational research domain name system (ER-DNS) hierarchical server network which works on internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) only, instead of the publicly available dual stack DNS root servers on the internet. There is a high probability of making the entire internet system unstable if any changes are made. Thus, we have created the experimental testbed, which functions similar to the existing live internet systems. It thus gives more flexibility to experiment and make technical and operational changes, without risking the stability and reliability of the internet system. In this paper, we have setup the entire DNS hierarchy starting from the root to the recursive servers with the top level domain (TLD) and domain authoritative name servers has been setup. This setup enables the queries to flow from the end user recursive servers to the domain authoritative server via the root as well as the TLD servers and provide the result to the end user. Query response in each of these servers were recorded to derive the response time, failure and successes to help in assessing the efficiency, behavior, functionality, stability and reliability of the ER-DNS architecture in IPv6 networks.

Intelligent Approach to Network Device Migration Planning towards Software-Defined IPv6 Networks.

Internet and telecom service providers worldwide are facing financial sustainability issues in migrating their existing legacy IPv4 networking system due to backward compatibility issues with the latest generation networking paradigms viz. Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) and software-defined networking (SDN). Bench marking of existing networking devices is required to identify their status whether the existing running devices are upgradable or need replacement to make them operable with SDN and IPv6 networking so that internet and telecom service providers can properly plan their network migration to optimize capital and operational expenditures for future sustainability. In this paper, we implement “adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS)”, a well-known intelligent approach for network device status identification to classify whether a network device is upgradable or requires replacement. Similarly, we establish a knowledge base (KB) system to store the information of device internetwork operating system (IoS)/firmware version, its SDN, and IPv6 support with end-of-life and end-of-support. For input to ANFIS, device performance metrics such as average CPU utilization, throughput, and memory capacity are retrieved and mapped with data from KB. We run the experiment with other well-known classification methods, for example, support vector machine (SVM), fine tree, and liner regression to compare performance results with ANFIS. The comparative results show that the ANFIS-based classification approach is more accurate and optimal than other methods. For service providers with a large number of network devices, this approach assists them to properly classify the device and make a decision for the smooth transitioning to SDN-enabled IPv6 networks.

Detection of ICMPv6-based DDoS attacks using anomaly based intrusion detection system: A comprehensive review

Security network systems have been an increasingly important discipline since the implementation of preliminary stages of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) for exploiting by attackers. IPv6 has an improved protocol in terms of security as it brought new functionalities, procedures, i.e., Internet Control Message Protocol version 6 (ICMPv6). The ICMPv6 protocol is considered to be very important and represents the backbone of the IPv6, which is also responsible to send and receive messages in IPv6. However, IPv6 Inherited many attacks from the previous internet protocol version 4 (IPv4) such as distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. DDoS is a thorny problem on the internet, being one of the most prominent attacks affecting a network result in tremendous economic damage to individuals as well as organizations. In this paper, an exhaustive evaluation and analysis are conducted anomaly detection DDoS attacks against ICMPv6 messages, in addition, explained anomaly detection types to ICMPv6 DDoS flooding attacks in IPv6 networks. Proposed using feature selection technique based on bio-inspired algorithms for selecting an optimal solution which selects subset to have a positive impact of the detection accuracy ICMPv6 DDoS attack. The review outlines the features and protection constraints of IPv6 intrusion detection systems focusing mainly on DDoS attacks.

Migration cost optimization for service provider legacy network migration to software‐defined IPv6 network

SummaryThis paper studies a problem for seamless migration of legacy networks of Internet service providers to a software‐defined networking (SDN)‐based architecture along with the transition to the full adoption of the Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) connectivity. Migration of currently running legacy IPv4 networks into such new approaches requires either upgrades or replacement of existing networking devices and technologies that are actively operating. The joint migration to SDN and IPv6 network is considered to be vital in terms of migration cost optimization, skilled human resource management, and other critical factors. In this work, we first present the approaches of SDN and IPv6 migration in service providers' networks. Then, we present the common concerns of IPv6 and SDN migration with joint transition strategies so that the cost associated with joint migration is minimized to lower than that of the individual migration. For the incremental adoption of software‐defined IPv6 (SoDIP6) network with optimum migration cost, a greedy algorithm is proposed based on optimal path and the customer priority. Simulation and empirical analysis show that a unified transition planning to SoDIP6 network results in lower migration cost.

Evolutionary gaming approach for decision making of Tier‐3 Internet service provider networks migration to SoDIP6 networks

SummaryWith the increasing number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, current networking world is suffering in terms of management and operations with lack of IPv4 addresses leading to issues like network address translation (NAT) proliferation, security and quality of services. Software‐defined networking (SDN) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) are the new networking paradigms evolved to address related issues of legacy IPv4 networking. To adapt with global competitive environment and avoid all existing issues in legacy networking system, network service providers have to migrate their networks into IPv6 and SDN‐enabled networks. But immediate transformations of existing network are not viable due to several factors like higher cost of migration, lack of technical human resources, lack of standards and protocols during transitions, and many more. In this paper, we present the migration analysis for proper decision making of network transition in terms of customer demand, traffic engineering, and organizational strength with operation expenditure for network migration using evolutionary gaming approach. Joint migration to SDN‐enabled IPv6 network from game theoretic perspective is modeled and is validated using numerical results obtained from simulations. Our empirical analysis shows the evolutionary process of network migration while different internal and external factors in the organization affect the overall migration. Evolutionary game in migration planning is supportive in decision making for service providers to develop suitable strategy for their network migration. The proposed approach for migration decision making is mostly applicable to fairly sustained service providers who lack economics, regulation/policy, and resources strengths.

A Hybrid Transition for IPv4-IPv6 Co-existence in Small Size Organization

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the current generation Internet protocol developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to handle the shortage of IP addresses in IPV4. The transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is gradually being done not happening as anticipated. It is unavoidable to have both IPv4 and IPv6 networks during the transition period, but unfortunately they are not compatible in nature. It is essential to maintain the IPv4 and IPv6 coexistence. The inter-communication ability of IPv4 and IPv6 is the dire need of network community. Many transition techniques are proposed in the recent years. This paper discussed the key difficulties in IPv4-IPv6 transition, and introduced the hybrid approach for coexistence of IPv4 and IPv6. It hybrid the advantages of weightage and tunneling translation techniques for providing inter-communication ability of IPv4 and IPv6. The proposed algorithm has been simulated and the performance metrics; transmission latency, throughput, jitter and delay have been analyzed from end to end host, through various scenarios includes IPv4 only, IPv6 Only, Dual stack, GRE tunneling. The performance of the proposed algorithm is analyzed and the future scope is discussed.

Towards energy efficiency and green network infrastructure deployment in Nepal using software defined IPv6 network paradigm

AbstractThe use of information and communication technology (ICT) has resulted in significant impacts on social welfare, economic growth, transparency, and good governance in developing countries like Nepal. Due to the diverse geographic and economic situations, ICT network and service expansions throughout Nepal have been becoming quite challenging. Private network operators mostly have confined their services to urban areas. Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) collects 2% royalty form Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Telecom Operators as Rural Telecommunications Disbursement Fund (RTDF) to enhance ICT services to rural Nepal. Broadband expansion projects initiated by utilizing RTDF to expand ICT infrastructure throughout Nepal are expected to have considerable societal and economical transformations in the rural communities of Nepal. This paper not only presents the current ICT deployment scenario of Nepal but also studies design, analysis, and evaluation of green networking that leverages both software defined networking (SDN), and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)—aka Software Defined IPv6 (SoDIP6)—for energy efficient networking, robust services, and sustainable ICT ecosystem for developing nations like Nepal. We evaluate the SoDIP6 network by considering a typical ISP with end access networks and present benefits and recommendations. Experimental results show that the proposed SoDIP6 network help significantly reduce the energy consumption and carbon footprint leading to overall economic benefits to service providers and the society. Furthermore, energy‐saving practices through SoDIP6 networks and some policy directions to the government to focus on green networking considering sensitivity of climate change and global warming impact in the mountainous and developing countries like Nepal are presented.

Software Defined IPv6 Network: A New Paradigm for Future Networking

Recent advancement in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has encouraged all stakeholders to move towards the new networking paradigm. Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) addressing, Software Defined Network (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are regarded as technologies for enhancing network efficiency and effectiveness. However, the technology migration becomes one of the central challenges for the stakeholders such as service providers, end users, and regulatory bodies. This is more challenging in case of developing countries due to lack of sufficient cost and skilled human resources. In this paper, we provide an overview and survey of SDN and IPv6 networking technologies, their benefits and future challenges. Then we introduce Software Defined IPv6 (SoDIP6) network as a next generation networking technologies and their unified approach of deployment over the Tier-3 ISPs of the developing nations that could help for speedy and smooth migration with optimized cost. The demonstrated superior features of SDN enabled IPv6 network from different perspectives with its contributions to green ICT are recognized as the networks of the future generation in the networking world.

Impacts Evaluation of DoS Attacks Over IPv6 Neighbor Discovery Protocol

The Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) is one of the main protocols in the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) suite. It provides many basic functions for the normal operations of IPv6 in a Local Area Network (LAN), such as address auto-configuration and address resolution. However, NDP has several vulnerabilities that can be used by malicious nodes to launch attacks, because NDP messages are easily spoofed. Surrounding this problem many solutions have been proposed for securing NDP but these solutions either proposed new protocols that need to be supported by all nodes or built mechanisms that require the cooperation of all nodes. In this paper we overview NDP vulnerabilities and available solutions to overcome their impacts on IPv6 network. In addition a research test bed setup to implement these vulnerabilities was introduced. Moreover attacks that prove these vulnerabilities are implemented on different types of operating systems, Windows and Linux platforms. Three network metrics throughput, delay and resources consumption have been chosen to investigate, analyze and evaluate the impacts of NDP related attacks on IPv6 link-local communication. Overall, the results had shown that performance of Linux based operating system is better than Windows based operating system.

DAD-match; Security technique to prevent denial of service attack on duplicate address detection process in IPv6 link-local network.

An efficiently unlimited address space is provided by Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). It aims to accommodate thousands of hundreds of unique devices on a similar link. This can be achieved through the Duplicate Address Detection (DAD) process. It is considered one of the core IPv6 network’s functions. It is implemented to make sure that IP addresses do not conflict with each other on the same link. However, IPv6 design’s functions are exposed to security threats like the DAD process, which is vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Such a threat prevents the host from configuring its IP address by responding to each Neighbor Solicitation (NS) through fake Neighbor Advertisement (NA). Various mechanisms have been proposed to secure the IPv6 DAD procedure. The proposed mechanisms, however, suffer from complexity, high processing time, and the consumption of more resources. The experiments-based findings revealed that all the existing mechanisms had failed to secure the IPv6 DAD process. Therefore, DAD-match security technique is proposed in this study to efficiently secure the DAD process consuming less processing time. DAD-match is built based on SHA-3 to hide the exchange tentative IP among hosts throughout the process of DAD in an IPv6 link-local network. The obtained experimental results demonstrated that the DAD-match security technique achieved less processing time compared with the existing mechanisms as it can resist a range of different threats like collision and brute-force attacks. The findings concluded that the DAD-match technique effectively prevents the DoS attack during the DAD process. The DAD-match technique is implemented on a small area IPv6 network; hence, the author future work is to implement and test the DAD-match technique on a large area IPv6 network.

Preventing Denial-of-service in Next Generation Internet Protocol Mobility

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a next-generation internet protocol that is devised to replace its predecessor, the IPv4. With the benefit of ample address space, flexible header extensions and its many specific features, IPv6 is the future of the Internet and Internetworking. A significant advantage of IPv6 is its capabilities in the domain of security and mobility, where it scores in comparison with its predecessor. One of the many features specific to IPv6, such as the mandatory IPsec messaging or address auto-configuration, is the Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP). Even though the concept of security is more pronounced in the IPv6 protocols, there still exist loopholes. These loopholes when exploited target the foundation of the Internetworking. The extensive applications of NDP make it even more necessary to identify and address these gaps to ensure network security. Hence, this paper investigates such loopholes in the applications of NDP in creating a network and analyzes the process of the denial-of-service attacks that endanger the safety of an established network. Also, the paper proposes a new method to mitigate Denial-of-Service (DoS) in network mobility of IPv6 networks. This proposed approach is a hybrid of existing solutions and is capable of overcoming the significant disadvantages of these methods. Also, the paper discusses the comparative analysis among the various existing solutions and illustrates the effect of the proposed method in MIPv6 security.

A framework for DNS naming services for Internet-of-Things devices

This paper proposes a new naming framework for Domain Name System (DNS) Name Autoconfiguration (called DNSNA) for Internet of Things (IoT) devices in Internet Protocol (IP) version 6 (IPv6) and IP version 4 (IPv4) networks. As the number of IoT devices increases, it can be a burden for users to manually configure the DNS names of the IoT devices. We propose DNSNA to provide an efficient DNS name management for IoT devices, supporting an IoT device’s DNS name auto-generation, its DNS name auto-registration, device discovery, and service discovery. A user can easily use the registered DNS information of the IoT devices for both device discovery and service discovery through DNSNA. DNSNA uses IPv6 Neighbor Discovery (ND) protocol for IPv6 IoT devices and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) for IPv4 IoT devices, respectively, in the IoT DNS name autoconfiguration. With either ND or DHCP, the IoT devices can obtain a DNS suffix and construct their DNS name. Also, through a physical-contact-based authentication of a user’s smartphone with an IoT device over Near Field Communication (NFC), an authenticated IoT device can automatically register its DNS name and the corresponding IP address into a local authoritative DNS server in a secure way. Through real experiments and analysis, it is shown that DNSNA can reduce the average number of packets by 60.8% and the accumulated packet volume by 97% in comparison with the existing DNS naming service (i.e., mDNS) for IoT devices in an IPv6 network.

Application of Grounded Theory in Determining Required Elements for IPv6 Risk Assessment Equation

The deployment of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) has raised security concerns among the network administrators. Thus, in strengthening the network security, administrator requires an appropriate method to assess the possible risks that occur in their networks. Aware of the needs to calculate risk in IPv6 network, it is essential to an organization to have an equation that is flexible and consider the requirements of the network. However, the existing risk assessment equations do not consider the requirement of the network. Therefore, this paper presents the adaptation of grounded theory to search for elements that are needed to develop IPv6 risk assessment (IRA6) equation. The attack scenarios’ experiments; UDP Flooding, TCP Flooding and Multicast attacks were carried out in different network environment to show how the IPv6 risk assessment equation being used. The result shows that the IRA6 equation is more flexible to be used regardless the network sizes and easier to calculate the risk value compared to the existing risk assessment equations. Hence, network administrators can have a proper decision making and strategic planning for a robust network security.

QoS Analysis on OSPFv3 And RIPng Using GRE Tunneling on IPv6 Integrated Ipv4 Network

Every year, the availability of public IPv4 addresses is running low. However, the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) has set a new addressing standard called IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6). IPv6 implementations can not be immediately performed on all end-to-end lines, a transition phase is required, one of which is the GRE tunneling method. IPv6 has some differences with IPv4, then in line with the presence of IPv6 will required the protocol that compatible with IPv6, among which is the routing protocol. Some dynamic routing protocols are created to support and can run on IPv6 such as RIPng and OSPFv3. Aim of this study is examines OSPFv3 routing protocols and RIPng routing protocols in terms of Quality of Service (QoS). The test is done by using seven routers with three scenarios in each routing protocol, ie scenario with best path active condition, when the network changes in other words best path down, and the scenario with best path condition has changed and the network has returned to normal. Testing is done by testing QoS parameters (delay, packet loss, and throughput) when the client computer downloads files with the .iso extension from the server. Downloaded files have different sizes, from 100 Mega Byte to 1 Giga Byte. From the results obtained that OSPFv3 provides better QoS (delay, packet loss, and throughput) than RIPng on integrated IPv6 network using GRE tunnel and can be a reference when going to transition from IPv4 to IPv6 using GRE Tunnel.

Rule-based detection technique for ICMPv6 anomalous behaviour

The rapid growth of the Internet in the past few years has revealed the limitation of address space in the current Internet Protocol (IP), namely IPv4. Essentially, the increasing demand and consumption of IP addresses have led to the anticipated exhaustion of IPv4 addresses. In order to address this concern, the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) has been developed to provide a sufficient address space. IPv6 is shipped with a new protocol, namely, the neighbour discovery protocol (NDP) which has vulnerabilities that can be used by attackers to launch attacks on IPv6 networks. Such vulnerabilities include the lack of exchange message authentication of NDP. Attacks targeting ICMPv6 protocol display ICMPv6 anomalies. As such, this paper proposes a rule-based technique for detecting ICMPv6 anomalous behaviours that negatively affect the network performance. The effectiveness of this technique is demonstrated by using substantial datasets obtained from the National Advance IPv6 Centre of Excellence (NAv6) laboratory. The experimental results have proved that the proposed technique is capable of detecting ICMPv6 anomalous behaviour s with a detection accuracy rate of 92%.

IPv6 Neighbor Discovery Protocol Specifications, Threats and Countermeasures: A Survey

Neighbor discovery protocol (NDP) is the core protocol of Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) suite. The motive behind NDP is to replace address resolution protocol (ARP), router discovery, and redirect functions in Internet protocol version 4. NDP is known as the stateless protocol as it is utilized by the IPv6 nodes to determine joined hosts as well as routers in an IPv6 network without the need of dynamic host configuration protocol server. NDP is susceptible to attacks due to the deficiency in its authentication process. Securing NDP is extremely crucial as the Internet is prevalent nowadays and it is widely used in communal areas, for instance, airports, where trust does not exist among the users. A malicious host is able to expose denial of service or man-in-the-middle attacks by injecting spoofed address in NDP messages. With the intention to protect the NDP many solutions were proposed by researchers. However, these solutions either introduced new protocols that need to be supported by all nodes or built mechanisms that require the cooperation of all nodes. Moreover, some solutions are deviating from the layering principals of open system interconnection model. Therefore, the necessity to study NDP in details to recognize and identify the points that could be a source of enhancement has become mandatory task. This article revolves around the survey of the vulnerabilities mitigations approaches of NDP, since the time of the protocol development up to the date of finalized this paper. We described the technical specifications of NDP showing its components, functions, and working procedures. In addition, each threat of NDP is classified and explained in details. Open challenges of NDP and recommended future directions for scientific research are presented at the end of this paper.