Study of packet level UDP performance of NAT44, NAT64 and IPv6 using iperf in the context of IPv6 migration Vitruvius John D. Barayuga William Emmanuel S. Yu Institute of Computing Studies Department of Information Systems and Computer Science Ilocos Sur Polytechnic State College Ateneo de Manila Univeristy Santa Maria, Ilocos Sur, Philippines Quezon City [email protected] [email protected] Abstract— The Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA) The initial design specification did not take into account the allocated the last of the available /8's of the IPv4 address space to need for the protocol to handle video-on-demand services, or the Regional Internet Registries (RIR's) on February 2011. It other types of large scale data, also with the advent of mobile could not be denied that IPv6 is the Internet of the next communications, set top boxes that have internet access taking generation, however its utilization and implementation in a wide presence in the home, each device requires an IP address, each scale had brought hesitation to the users since it will take time device requires an IP address. and there are concerns that need to be explored in the future. However, the need for a new technology is not paramount; Hence, this paper will lead the way for the acceptance of Internet the current 30-year-old technology has been modified to Protocol version 6 (IPv6) migration in the Philippines using a coincide with new ideas and ways of working. For a similar Network Address Translation (NAT) that there is an sustainable network to be developed and evolve over the next apparent means to be taken into consideration and NAT IPv6 to IPv4 (NAT64) can be a good choice for computer networks with few years a seamless migration over to IPv6 needs to be made. the similar situation like the Philippines which is behind NAT44, It would be foolish to believe that this could be done overnight showing service providers and institutions in putting NAT64 as a in the infrastructure of the Internet along with the associated viable option to be used. Therefore it is concluded, where overall cost of upgrading hardware and software [2]. IPv6 was performance revealed that IPv6 and NAT64 network offered developed to solve the problem of IPv4 depletion. The question better performance against the NAT44 network in almost all of is, are we ready to replace the dotted decimal IP to a new the metrics in the iperf generic UDP mode test. For time transfer, address scheme? Aside from the evident change in addressing IPv6 had 19% less and NAT64 with 31% less where both scheme, the change will not be felt by normal user, this burden executed the transfer in a lesser time compared to NAT44 will fall upon network engineers and administrators. But the networks with 48% which is longer than the results of the change are even better, aside from limitless address space (32- aforementioned networks. In the bandwidth utilization, it is bit address to 128 bit address). presented that IPv6 network had 43% and NAT64 network with This paper aims to embolden NAT44 networks to take the 41% offered better bandwidth utilization as compared to NAT44 challenge or even taking the small step to prepare and switch to network with 15%. IPv6 network had 49% showed faster IPv6 by considering the idea of using NAT64 as a suitable transfer rate along with NAT64 network with 39% in transition mechanism to take the place of the current NAT44 comparison to the NAT44 network with only 10% transfer. For networks. The need of the hour has now come, it is to enable jitter, IPv6 network had lesser average with 28% and so with IPv6 capabilities on all existing networks. NAT64 network with 31% compared to NAT44 with 40% jitter which is a quite bigger than the other experimental networks. II. RELATED WORK For packet loss, IPv6 network had 26% and NAT64 network This section contains literature and studies, reviewed by the with 33% compared to NAT44 network that had 40% bigger than the other experimental networks. researcher, which have been found relevant to this paper. The discussion focuses on IPv4 Depletion, IPv6 Migration Keywords—IPv6 migration, NAT44, NAT64, IPv6 transition Techniques as well as pertinent information that could be mechanism useful in the experimental network environments. I. INTRODUCTION A. IPv4 Depletion IPv4 has been the networking protocol of the Internet since The IPv4 depletion is now at hand. IANA has just recently the 1970s. The 32-bit protocol which provides 4.3 billion allocated the last five /8 blocks of unassigned IPv4 addresses to the world’s five RIR’s [1]. Some networks are still hiding unique IP addresses for the Internet users for more than 30 inside NAT. It has been and still present in many networks in years is nearing its expiration date. Hidden from the view of the Philippines, though it has lengthened the life of IPv4 for typical users, every Internet communication relies on an several year, but is not actually the solution. This is where IPv6 underlying system of numbers to identify data sources and comes to action, the next generation internet protocol to replace destinations. Users typically specify online destinations by IPv4. This research came about to show a clear path to IPv6 entering domain names (e.g. "congress.gov"). But the migration. The use of IPv4 has changed dramatically over the Internet's routers forward data according to numeric IP last 30 years, and the protocol was never designed to deal with addresses (e.g. 140.147.249.9). To date, the Internet has the stress and strains it has to endure over the last few years. enjoyed an ample supply of "IPv4" IP addresses, but demand Manuscript received July 15, 2014; acceptance August 27, 2014. This work was supported in part by the Commission on Higher Education of the Philippines and the University of the Cordilleras, Baguio City, Philippines. 978-1-4799-6541-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE is substantial and growing. Current allocation rates suggest performance comparison regarding latency and packet loss, IPv4 exhaustion by approximately 2011 [3]. been discussed in [11]. IPv6 addresses inherent problems in the earlier version protocol and it provides new opportunities B. IPv6 Migration Techniques too. However, due to the increased overhead in IPv6 and its This section contains review of the papers and articles that interaction with the operating system that hosts this are relevant to IPv6. The following gave more than the basic communication protocol, there may be network performance information needed about the next generation protocol and the issues such as bandwidth and jitter performance comparison migration strategies currently available. A more detailed which was discussed in [12]. As discussed from the paper by account on what companies should do in preparation for IPv6 Llanto [13], the study was done through live laboratory migration was suggested in the article by Steve Harris [4]. network tests using NAT44, NAT64 and IPv6 technologies to These strategies are divided into three (3) types namely: 1) show that NAT64s performance is comparable to current Dual-stack mechanisms; 2) Tunneling techniques and 3) NAT44 networks with application testing on HTPP requests Translation techniques. scenario using apachebench which is a Hypertext Transfer The migration of IPv6 had not gone well as planned not Protocol (HTTP) server benchmarking tool. only within the Philippines but on several countries using On other hand, this study focused on the experimental NAT44 as well. There are lots of networks which are still network tests using NAT44, NAT64 and IPv6 technologies to using IPv4 and have not made any move to switch to IPv6. In show that NAT64 performance is comparable to current order to boost IPv6 adoption, NAT for IPv6 has been taken NAT44 networks through a load test scenario for the generic into consideration so that IPv4 and IPv6 networks can be UDP traffic by the use of iperf including factors on time connected. Several of these NAT solutions have been transfer, bandwidth, transfer rate, jitter and packet loss using proposed and these are discussed in [5]. different sets of payload size and concurrency level. Some of the most popular research topics over the past years was using NAT-PT for IPv6. An implementation of a III. METHODOLOGY NAT-PT gateway for IPv6 and IPv4 is discussed in [6] and a The purpose of this paper is to encourage other NAT44 research on how to design and realize the translation gateway networks to move to IPv6 using a possible option which is based on NAT-PT technology in detail, it compares various NAT64. In order to accomplish the paper, an experimental current transition technologies and points out that NAT-PT network had been done. Prior to the experimental networks technology is a more feasible project to carry out the transition using NAT44, NAT64 and native IPv6 had been configured to from IPv4 network to IPv6 network on the present stage [7]. test the viability of the research. Llano [13] mentioned in this paper that the Philippines and A. Procedures other market dependent and behind NAT would consider The following experimental network set-ups were created: NAT64 as a viable option to implement IPv6 within current NAT44, native IPv6 and NAT64. To evaluate the NAT44 networks as the start of the adjustment in accepting experimental networks iperf was used in the generic UDP the next generation of the internet protocol which is IPv6. mode. Each of the NAT44, NAT64 and IPV6 network was This paper used NAT64, which is another NAT translation executed in load test scenario with payload of 100 MB, 500 mechanism for IPv6 which allows IPv6 clients to get MB and 1000 MB sent to the server along concurrency levels connected to IPv4 servers.