Quality of Service and performance characterization of IPv6 relative to IPv4

IV.6.3 Difference between an IPv4 and an IPv6 system with Windows XP

The following figure shows an example of an IPv4 only node before installing IPv6; as shown in this figure the node that using the IPv4 has only one IP address.

Figure 25: IPv4 address

Source: Windows XP/DOS

As shown in the figure below after installing IPv6, the node that is installed with IPv6 has multiple IP addresses, it gains new features. It has a complete support for both protocol versions. This type of node is referred as IPv6/IPv4 node, capable of sending and receiving both IPv4 and IPv6 packets.

Figure 26: IPv6 address

Source: Windows XP/DOS

· The IPv4 address: the address that was assigned statically (192.168.3.21).

· The link-local address: it is the combination of the prefix fe80::/64 and 64 bit-interface identifier (the MAC address) that is being transformed into the link-local address. Therefore the link local of the example node is fe80::/64 and the Media Access Control address 00-11-43-2C-67-F6 is [ fe80::211:43ff:fe2c:67f6%4 ]

· The site-local address: it the address that is being configured automatically by the router. It generates the address to the host using its built-in configuration. [ fec0::3:211:43ff:fe2c:67f6%1 ]

· The IPv6 embedded IPv4 address: it is the address that is assigned by the Intra-Site Automatic Tunnel Addressing Protocol designed to provide IPv6 connectivity between IPv6 nodes within a mainly IPv4-based intra-network that does not have an IPv6 router in the site. It is the combination of prefix (64-bit), the interface identifier (00005E) which follows the prefix, following by byte FE that indicates that the address contains an embedded IPv4 address, and the last four bytes that contain IPv4 address written in dotted decimal notation. Therefore the address of the node shown below is [ fe80::5efe:192.168.2.21%2 ]^43(*)

IV.6.4 IPv6 with Linux

In this study, we used the Flexible Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture (FEDORA) Core distribution of Linux. We used Fedora Core release 3; it is based on Linux Kernel version 2.6.8.^44(*)

To install the IPv6 on Fedora Core perform the following steps:

Go to applications System Settings Network Edit Enable IPv6 for the interface Activate (activating network device).

Figure 27: IPv6 installation in Linux

Source: Fedora Core

From the displayed list, enable the IPv6 interface, save the configuration change [ctrl +s] and Restart the network services, at the prompt shell, type the command below:

[root@FS-CS-CA ~]# service network restart
see if all interface is [OK]

Or reboot the computer.

[root@FS-CS-CA ~]# reboot

* ⁴³ IPv6 essentials, O'REILLY, ISBN: 0-596-00125-8, page 179.

* ⁴⁴ Fedora Core is a Red Hat Package Manager based Linux distribution, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat.