Christer Engman (e94_cen@e.kth.se)
Stockholm, Sweden
1999
Abstract
The Internet has expanded enormously over the last few years. The development of new services and the discovery of new application areas continue as the Internet gains interest. Today, broadband Internet connections are spreading and connecting increasingly more people at their homes. However, this expansion may require a prominent upgrade of today’s Internet. This thesis explores how the next generation Internet protocol, IPv6, may be introduced in a home network environment. IPv6 is expected to eventually replace the current protocol, IPv4, since it provides many enhancements and new features of which many are ideal for using in a home network. The report includes a description of the home networking concept and a brief description of IPv6 followed by a study that shows that home networking really could benefit from the new features provided by the new protocol. Also described are the various transition mechanisms required for IPv4 and IPv6 to coexist side by side during the introduction. Finally, experiments conducted in a fictive home network is documented and analyzed to show how some of the IPv6 features work in practice and how they are configured. The experiments also revealed the current shortage of IPv6 implementations, which was quite surprising.
Table of Contents
Abstract iii
Table of Contents v
1 Introduction 1
2 Home Networking 3
3 IPv6 Overview 7
4 Using IPv6 at Home 19
5 Introducing IPv6 Today 25
6 Experimental Setup 33
7 Related Initiatives 41
8 Conclusions 43
9 Future Work 45
10 References 47
Appendix A Autoconfiguration Process 49
Appendix B IPv6 Implementation Status 50
Appendix C Experimental Setup Details 51
Appendix D Acronyms 53
1Introduction
1.1Background
The Internet was originally used as a minor message handling system restricted to small research labs or campuses. Today, the Internet is the fastest growing media for distributing information and has already become a potential alternative to traditional information channels such as magazines, television, radio and telephony. The Internet has also become a vital part of many companies’ business strategies, which depends, partly or entirely, on their Internet customers.
Geographically, the Internet already spans across the globe and interconnects the majority of all countries with high capacity fibers. However, when investigating the “leaf nodes” of the network topology we find that the facilities with high-speed connections are limited to research labs, universities and bigger companies. Users sitting at home may also connect to a nearby server, but that connection is often a low-speed dial-up connection using a modem. These connections are also made on a temporary basis, as they tend to last no more than a couple of hours at a time. Now the Internet continues to grow with broadband Internet access to the homes through alternative techniques such as the cable TV network. When this phase is completed, the Internet will reach far more people than today, and the usage of the net is expected to literally explode. New applications and habits will be developed and the Internet will be part of everyone’s life, just as TV and radio are today.
However, the Internet expansion will not stop there. Future homes will contain many electronic devices and appliances, of which a substantial part will feature network connectivity. The “home LAN” is born where an in-house network is used to interconnect all of these devices and appliances, and finally connect them to the Internet. The market of “home networking” is predicted to be enormous. Just think of the endless kinds of devices and applications, which will be suitable for, or completely dedicated to, the home network market. Surveillance, home automation, resource sharing and information retrieval are just a few examples.
This change in Internetworking was impossible to predict when the original Internet was built in the early 70’s. The protocol used for transporting the information through the network has ever since been the same Internet Protocol version 4 – IPv4. Now this is about to change. The growth of the Internet and the new demands from new applications requires the protocol to be upgraded with additional support for features such as scalability, multimedia, mobility and security. Therefore, the development of a new Internet protocol was started in 1992. The new protocol, Internet Protocol version 6, IPv6, will eliminate most of today’s limitations, but not without a cost. Existing routers, hosts and applications will be incompatible with IPv6 and therefore have to be upgraded. This transition period is estimated to span over multiple decades, and during that time IPv4 and IPv6 will coexist side by side. Is it worth the upgrade? When should the upgrade begin? Where should we start? The questions are rising, and the search for answers can begin…
The scope of this report is limited to the home network and its closest surroundings. The goal with the report is to match the demands of home networking with the features that IPv6 provide. A brief analysis of how IPv6 may be introduced is also within the scope of the report.
The report is introduced with theoretical overviews of the home networking concept and IPv6 in Chapter 2 and 3 respectively. If you have great understanding in either of these areas, you can easily skip the corresponding chapter.
The central part of the report is located in Chapter 4. Here, the combination of home networking and IPv6 is analyzed by matching demands with features. The grouping in this chapter is based on the demands present in a home network rather than the features provided by IPv6 to emphasize the focus on home networking. Real world examples and terms are used to make the discussion concrete help the reader to get a greater understanding.
Chapter 5 is dedicated to the transition from IPv4 towards IPv6. The introduction of IPv6 will meet many obstacles since it is not compatible with IPv4 and therefore requires upgrade of both hosts and routers. Several transition mechanisms are covered and compared side by side to clarify the difference between them regarding availability, requirements and features.
Next, Chapter 6 presents the results I gained from my practical experiments conducted in a fictive home network environment. Features and mechanisms described earlier in the report are verified and visually presented in the form of “packet dumps”.
Finally, the Chapters 7, 8 and 9 include a short description of research topics related to the report together with conclusions and suggestions to further investigate the possibilities with IPv6.
