Assessing IPv6 through web access a measurement study and its findings

Abstract

Transitioning an infrastructure the size of the Internet is no small feat. We are in the midst of such a transition, i.e., from IPv4 to IPv6. IPv6 was standardized 15 years ago, but until recently there were few incentives to adopt it. The allocation of the last large block of IPv4 addresses changed that, and migrating to an IPv6 Internet has become more urgent. This migration is, however, still rife with uncertainties and challenges. The goal of this paper is to provide insight into this transition, and possibly make it smoother. The focus is on the "network," and the paper reports on extensive measurements that compare and contrast IPv6 and IPv4. Two important hypotheses, denoted as H1 and H2, were identified and validated. H1 argues that the IPv6 and IPv4 data planes now perform by and large comparably. In contrast, H2 points to routing differences as the primary culprit behind occurrences of poorer IPv6 performance. In other words, promoting IPv6 and IPv4 peering parity is probably the single most effective step towards equal IPv6 and IPv4 performance

A Case Study of IPv6 Network Performance: Packet Delay, Loss, and Reordering

“…Zhou et al [16] found that IPv6 paths have a higher delay and loss than their IPv4 counterparts, mainly due to its poor performance in IPv6-in-IPv4 tunnels. Nikkhah et al [17] and Dhamdhere et al [20] found that IPv6 delay is similar to IPv4 performance when the ASlevel paths are identical. Czyz et al [21] concluded that IPv6 RTT is getting better according to a long-term observation.…”

“…Investigating the performance of IPv6 network is the basis of guaranteeing the network with a good performance. Therefore, many studies have been performed to analyze IPv6 network performance, as well as figure out the differences between IPv4 and IPv6 [13][14][15][16][17]. However, our understanding of IPv6 network cannot catch up with the speed of its development.…”

Mitigating sampling error when measuring internet client IPv6 capabilities

“…Kuehne [8] surveyed the IPv6 deployment by querying web and email servers of the top domains from Alexa for DNS AAAA records. Nikkah et al [36] compared the performance of IPv4 and IPv6 based on accessing a larger number of IPv6-capable web servers. CAIDA [37] visualised the IPv6 Internet topology based on routing information and active probing.…”

Migrating the Internet to IPv6: An Exploration of the When and Why

“…In particular, a 2007 study [50] showed that IPv6 forwarding plane lagging behind its IPv4 counterpart, with routers/switches the primary culprits. Those early stability problems are, however, now over and a study we conducted in 2011 [36] showed that the IPv6 and IPv4 forwarding planes now perform similarly. [49].…”