INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 3, ISSUE 2, FEBRUARY 2014 ISSN 2277-8616 Comparison Between Ipv4 And Ipv6 In Adopting Differentiated Services. Mohammed Al-Zobbi Abstract: IPv4 is an old protocol and suffers from addresses shortage, redundancy and other problems. IPv6 is a new protocol, which is not been widely adopted, but it supports Quality of Service (QoS) Features and a huge range of unique addresses. IPv6 needs to be tested and evaluated regarding to QoS support. The Differentiated Services “DiffServ” is a QoS framework; it could be implemented in either IPv4 or IPv6. DiffServ requires 6-bit value to be assigned to IPv4/IPv6 header; this value is called DSCP (DiffServ codepoint). DSCP is set in a “ToS” field in IPv4, and in a “Class” field in IPv6. There is no any implementation difference between assigning DSCP in either IPv4 or IPv6. In this research, a comparison between IPv4 and IPv6 in adopting DiffServ framework is presented. DiffServ represents the QoS frameworks; the impact of each version of IPs on QoS, affects the DiffServ framework, and as a result, affects the whole network performance. Index Terms: Adopting DiffServ, CodePoint in DeiffServ, Comparison between IPv4 and Ipv6, DiffServ and QoS, IPv4 and IPv6, IPv6 and QoS, Network protocol ———————————————————— 1. INTRODUCTION Gai (1998) replays that the use of subnets can increase the The problem of the limited IPv4 addresses could be solved efficiency of the network to a certain level. In fact, users or in different alternative technologies such as: subnetting, organizations may abuse the IP addresses system, by Network Addresses Translation (NAT), or Classless Inter- purchasing class B addresses, while the used addresses Domain Routing (CIDR). However, with NAT, the external are not more than 100. In this case, more than 65,500 people see the entire subnet as one computer, and this addresses are potentially wasted. However, Loshin (1999) inherits problems [26]. IP addresses might be solved for a claims that it’s not only the user’s fault, but also the nature while, but they will no longer be able to handle the fast of IP addresses is a waste, because organizations have to growth of Internet. Moreover, some more problems are buy their IP for no more than one or two terminals; this hardly to be solved relating to the current structure of IPv4. means tying up 254 host addresses. The subnetting causes More problems are discussed in the following sections. IP addresses wastage of resources. The size of the Routers need to lookup the longest match in the organization should match the chosen IP class, and this conventional IP routing list; routers then decide the right rarely happens. path to send the datagram through [6]. The limited amount of network would cause any delay problem for the routers; 2. IPV6 in fact, the computer networks are increasing continuously, IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long or 16 octets. IPv6 which could reach to a level of causing a serious delay for addresses are four times longer than IPv4 addresses. The the routed data. In such case, the future network may hexadecimal system is used to assign the addresses, witness more delay in the network. This routing issue instead of the decimal system in IPv4. Eight groups of affects the performance of the networks, and as a result it numbers, separated by a colon (:), are used, each group affects the Internet’s growth [6]. Subnetting is a technique contains pair of hexadecimal numbers, for example: used to save the IP addresses by assigning as much addresses as possible [3]. Three main classes of addresses FEDC: BA88:45DF:9810:0008:417A:0000:0FB6 are available, these are A,B and C. Class A provides 3 empty digits of addresses, e.g. 122.x.x.x. While Class B In this example, we can see the difficulties of remembering provides 2 empty digits of addresses, e.g. 122.211.x.x. and or managing these addresses. This explains the need for Class C provides 1 empty digit of addresses, e.g. DHCP and DNS servers, in order to assign these 122.211.101.x. By subnetting, a class A, B, or C network addresses automatically. A new version of DHCPv6 is addresses can be divided into different subnets. Each designed to provide auto configuration to client-server subnet is used to identify a branch of the organizations [3]. nodes [4]. Compression methods or shortcuts can be applied to IPv6 addresses by neglecting zeros; for example, we can type 0 instead of 0000, or 20 instead of 0020 [4]. More compression can be applied, by replacing (:) by a series of zeros: as an example: the address 0050:0:0:0:0:0:0:CA2B could be re-written as 50: :CA2B. Some reserved addresses use the principle of shortcut, such as: multicasting: FF01: :43, loop back address : :1, ________________________________ and unspecified address : : [9]. The author has completed a master degree in 2.1 IPv6 Extension Header Computing, from the University of Western Sydney / IPv4 header contains an option header, while IPv6 assigns Australia. This research was supervised by Dr. the options in separateextension headers. This design Seyed Shahrestani. Author improves the routers performances; the routers don’t need email: [email protected] to examine extra fields, especially if they were unused. The extension header is almost 64-bit size, and they can’t be 237 IJSTR©2014 www.ijstr.org INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 3, ISSUE 2, FEBRUARY 2014 ISSN 2277-8616 empty; they are used only on demand. Figure (2.3), relative performance (such as class differentiation). It first illustrates an extension headers examples [1]. The assigns bits to IP header, and then it uses these bits to extension headers are processed in the order they appear determine how packets are forwarded, and finally uses the in the packet [4], RFC 1883 recommends that these marked packet to force QoS policies and conditions at the headers appear as the following: IPv6 header, Hop-by-Hop network boundaries [12]. The PHB provides different option header, Destination Options headers, Routing treatments to the network traffic. DiffServ requires headers, Fragment header, Authentication header, monitoring, policing, and shaping in order to investigate the Encapsulating Security Payload header, Destination satisfaction for the QoS. Traffic analysis and statistical header, Upper header [4,23]. The Hop-by-Hop and calculation are essential processes to provide the satisfied Destination extension header are encoded by using TLV configuration for PHB. Some difficulties may face the PHB format. Hop-by-Hop extension header handles the extra- configuration as a reason of non-standardizing the PHB large IP packets, which is over 65,535 bytes; routers are configuration, and the non-fully understanding of traffic unable to handle such these jumbo packets. In IPv6, these rules and polices. Figure (3.1) shows DiffServ diagram. The packets are discarded without adding the Hop-by-Hop DS size is 8-bit divided into two fields; the first field is called optional extension header. Figure (2.4) shows the format of DiffServ Codepoint (DSCP), the field size is six-bit used to option header in TLV format [23]. identify the packet. The second field size is two-bit Currently Unused (CU). IPv6 Header Next Header TCP PDU =TCP IPv6 Header Routing Header Next Header Next Header= TCP TCP PDU Figure (3.1), shows DiffServ classification source [20] =Routing The unused field should be ignored, while the six-bit field IPv6 Header Routing Header Fragment Header can be set as (0,1). There is no standard to assign values, Next Header Next Header = Next Header=TCP TCP PDU implementers should be aware of six-bit field to create their =Routing Fragment own table of index, which is used to select a particular packet handling mechanism. The particular codepoint is selected by the following the format “xxx000” or DiffServ is Figure (2.3), Extension Header Source [4] selected as “xxx000|xx”. This packet marking is done on the edge routers, the edge routers examines the packet, and then decides the suitable codepoint to that packet based on Option Type Option Data Length Option Data the table of index. The core router doesn’t need to assign any marks, it only reads the codepoint and decides the 2 1 5 class selector PHB based on it. A default BHP “000000” is used to enable the delivery of packets without any strict conditions or rules. The packet marked with a default BHP Figure (2.4), TLV options may be re-marked again with another codepoint as it passes the boundary to another domain. Figure (2.4) shows three fields in the extension header, these fields are divided as the following: IPv6 header 3.1 DiffServ and Tunneling notifies the optional header by using the next-header field, The main principle, of DiffServ tunneling configuration, is for example; Hop-by-Hop option header is notified by (0), setting the inner and outer DSCP properly to avoid and fragment option is notified by (44) [3]. The Jumbo transmission faults. Six different statuses are defined for Payload Option is essential to the packets that exceed the encapsulation and decapsulation processes, these statuses 65,535 bytes. The Payload Length field in IPv6 header are shown in figure (3.3). The diagram shows [1-before] assigns 16 bits only, while the Jumbo Payload option means the packet before encapsulation, [2-inner] means assigns (4n + 2), whereas n: any Integer. However, the the inner packet is encapsulated, [3-outer] means the outer maximum limit of data is 4,294,967,295 octets [23]. The packet is encapsulated, [4-inner], and [5-outer] mean the Jumbo Payload Option is included in Hop-by-Hop option inner and the outer packets are decapsulated, while [6- header, the Option Type value = 194, and the Option Data after] is the packet after decapsulation.