Migrating to IPv6

Abstract: Today hundreds of millions of users are interconnected by communication channels allowing them to communicate and to share information. These users and the devices that interconnect them are what constitute the Internet. The Internet is a network of networks with a myriad of computer devices, including smartphones, game consoles (handheld/stationary), IP televisions, tablet computers, laptop computers, desktop computers, palmtop computers, etc. This network of computers flourishes because of careful planning and maintenance by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), backbone network operators, and others. An additional factor that enables the Internet to operate is the four logical layers of abstraction in the TCP/IP protocol stack. One of these layers is the layer responsible for the transfer of datagrams/packets from one host to another. This layer is known as the Internet Protocol (IP) layer. However, as originally conceived a 32 bit address was thought to be more than enough. The space of IP addresses was distributed among different regions rather disproportionately, driven largely by the numbers of addresses that were requested (ordered in time). Today after a series of inventions in the field (such as the world wide web) and a rapid growth in the number of devices that wish to connect to the Internet the available unassigned address space has largely been depleted. Regions with large populations, but with few assigned blocks of IP addresses have begun to exhaust all their assigned addresses, while other regions face the same fate in a few months. The need for a larger address space was predicted years ago and the next generation addressing scheme was devised as part of the development of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6). Countries such as China and India had few IPv4 addresses and they have been forced to transition to IPv6 rather quickly. Today a significant number of the users in these countries are unable to communicate over IPv4 networks. The purpose of this thesis project is to discuss the transition to IPv6 and the transition to this new addressing scheme. IPv6 provides a much larger address space, along with a number of additional improvements in comparison to the previous version of IP (i.e., IPv4). Despite the advantages of adopting IPv6, the incentive to transition is low amongst well established businesses, especially those in regions that received a considerable number of IPv4 addresses initially. Instead different techniques have been employed in these places to mitigate the problem of IPv4 address exhaustion. It is also probable that this reluctance is a way to keep competing businesses out of the market for a while longer. This thesis aims to facilitate the transition from IPv4 to IPv6.