IPv6 multicast home proxy

Abstract: The Internet is becoming increasingly fragmented, leading to a more heterogeneous end-user experience depending on the user's network location (i.e., point of attachment to the network). This is a consequence of several ongoing changes of the Internet. Different regions of the world are in different phases of their rollout of IPv6, making intercommunication increasingly challenging. Copyright legislation has caught up with ICT technology, but differences in licensing agreements may very from nation to nation which often hinders content being accessed beyond borders. Finally, several high-profile government attempts have been made to enforce stringent censorship of data. Therefore, we believe that a demand exists for simple consumer-oriented technologies for proxying and tunneling data between separate regions of the Internet. Furthermore, we believe that this demand will increase dramatically during the coming years. A key success factor for this next generation of proxies will be the ability to handle multicast IPv6 packets, as these packets represent the most probable distribution method for IPTV in the future. This thesis examines the challenges presented by IPv6 multicast-routing in the context of constructing a proxy. It also presents a best-practice solution to the problem of designing, implementing, and utilizing such a proxy. The thesis also contains a review of current IPv6 multicast routing technology. Several implementations are benchmarked against each other, with the goal of building a prototype for a consumer-oriented IPv6 multicast proxy. The prototype is presented and was tested. These tests demonstrate the functionality of the prototype proxy and reveal areas where the prototype could be improved. Finally a possible capitalization strategy is suggested.