4.7 IPv6

In the early 1990's the Internet Engineering Task force began an effort to develop a successor to the IPv4 protocol.  A prime motivation for this effort was the realization that the 32-bit IP address space was beginning to be used up, with new networks and IP nodes being attached to the Internet (and being allocated unique IP addresses) at a breathtaking rate.  To respond to this need of a large IP address space, a new IP protocol, IPv6, was developed. The designers of IPv6 also took this opportunity to tweak and augment other aspects of IPv4, based on the accumulated operational experience with IPv4.

The point in time when IPv4 addresses would have been completely allocated (and hence no new networks could have attached to the Internet) was the subject of considerable debate.  Based on current trends in address allocation, the estimates of the two leaders of the IETF's Address Lifetime Expectations working group were that addresses would become exhausted in 2008 and 2018 respectively [Solensky 1996] .  In 1996, the American Registry for Internet Number (ARIN)  reported that all of the IPv4 class A addresses have been assigned, 62% of the class B addresses have been assigned, and 37% of the class C addresses have been assigned [ARIN 1996].  While these estimates and numbers suggested that a considerable amount of time might be left until the IPv4 address space became exhausted, it was realized that considerable time would be needed to deploy a new technology on such an extensive scale, and so the "Next Generation IP" (IPng) effort [Bradner 1996], [RFC1752]was begun. An excellent on-line source of information about IPv6 is The IP Next Generation Homepage. An excellent book is also available on the subject [Huitema 1997].

4.7.1 IPv6 Packet Format

The format of the IPv6 packet is shown in Figure 4.7-1. The most important changes introduced in IPv6 are evident in the packet format:

Figure 4.7-1: IPv6 packet format

The IPv6 packet format is shown in Figure 4.7-1.  As noted above, a comparison of Figure 4.7-1 with Figure 4.4-8 reveals the simpler, more streamlined structure of the IPv6 packet.  The following packet fields are defined in IPv6:

The discussion above identified the purpose of the fields that are included in the IPv6 packet. Comparing  the IPv6 packet format in Figure 4.7-1 with the IPv4 packet format that we saw earlier in Figure 4.4-8, we notice that several fields appearing in the IPv4 packet are no longer present in the IPv6 packet:

A New ICMP for IPv6

Recall from our discussion in Section 4.3, that the ICMP protocol is used by IP nodes to report error conditions and provide limited information (e.g., the echo reply to a ping message)  to an end system.  A new version of ICMP has been defined for IPv6 in [RFC 1885].  In addition to reorganizing the existing ICMP type and code definitions, ICMPv6 also added new types and codes required by the new IPv6 functionality.  These include the "Packet Too Big" type, and an "unrecognized IPv6 options" error code.  In addition, ICMPv6 subsumes the functionality of the Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) that we will study in Section 4.8. IGMP, which is used to manage a host's joining and leaving of so-called multicast groups, was previously a separate protocol from ICMP in IPv4.

5.7.2 Transitioning from IPv4 to IPv6

Now that we have seen the technical details of IPv6, let us consider a very practical matter: how will the public Internet, which is based on IPv4, be transitioned to IPv6?  The problem is that while new IPv6-capable systems can be made "backwards compatible", i.e., can send, route, and receive IPv4 packets, already deployed IPv4-capable systems are not capable of handling IPv6 packets.  Several options are possible.

One option would be to declare a "flag day" - a given time and date when all Internet machines would be turned off, be upgraded from IPv4 to IPv6.   The last major technology transition (from using NCP to using TCP for reliable transport service) occurred almost 20 years ago.  Even back then [RFC 801], when the Internet was tiny and still being administered by a small number of "wizards," it was realized the such a flag day was not possible.  A flag day involving hundreds of millions of machines and millions of network administrators and users is even more unthinkable today.  [RFC 1993] describes two approaches (which can be used either alone or together) for gradually integrating IPv6 hosts and routers into an IPv4 world (with the long term goal, of course, of having all IPv4 nodes eventually transition to IPv6).

Probably the most straightforward way to introduce IPv6-capable nodes is a dual stack approach, where IPv6 nodes also have a complete IPv4 implementation as well.   Such a node, referred to as IPv6/IPv4 node in [RFC  1993], the ability to send and receive both IPv4 and IPv6 packets.  When interoperating with an IPv4 node, an IPv6/IPv4 node can use IPv4 packets; when interoperating with an IPv6 node, it can speak IPv6.  IPv6/IPv4 nodes must have both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses.  They must furthermore be able to determine whether another node is IPv6-capable or IPv4-only.  This problem can be solved using the DNS (see Chapter 2), which can return an IPv6 address if the node name being resolved is IPv6 capable, or otherwise return an IPv4 address.  Of course, if the node issuing the DNS request in only IPv4 capable, the DNS returns only an IPv4 address.


Figure 4.7-3: A dual stack approach







In the dual stack approach, if either the sender of the receiver is only IPv4-capable, IPv4 packets must be used.  As a result, it is possible that two IPv6-capable nodes can end, in essence, sending IPv4 packets to each other.  This is illustrated in Figure 4.7-3.  Suppose node A is IPv6 capable and wants to send an IP  packet to  node E,  which is also IPv6-capable. Nodes A and B can exchange an IPv6 packet.  However, node B must create an IPv4 packet to send to C. Certainly, the data field of the IPv6 packet can be copied into the data field of the IPv4 packet and appropriate address mapping can be done.   However, in performing the conversion from IPv6 to IPv4, there will be IPv6-specific fields in the IPv6 packet (e.g., the flow identifier field)  that have no counterpart in IPv4.  The information is these fields will be lost.   Thus, even though E and F can exchange IPv6 packets, the arriving IPv4 packets at E from D do not contain all of the fields that were in te original IPv6 packet sent from A. .

An alternative to the dual stack approach, also discussed in [RFC 1993], is known as tunneling.  Tunneling can solve the problem noted above, allowing, for example, E to receive the IPv6 packet originated by A.  The basic idea behind tunneling is the following.  Suppose two IPv6 nodes (e.g, B and E in Figure 4.7-3)  want to interoperate using IPv6 packets, but are connected to each other by intervening IPv4 routers.  We refer to the  intervening set of IPv4 routers between two IPv6 routers as a tunnel, as illustrated in Figure 4.7-4.  With tunneling, the IPv6 node on the sending side of the tunnel (e.g., B) takes the entire IPv6 packet, and puts it in  the data (payload) field of an IPv4 packet.  This IPv4 packet is then addressed to the IPv6 node on the receiving side of the tunnel (e.g., E) and sent to the first node in the tunnel (e.g., C).   The intervening IPv4 routers in the tunnel route this IPv4 packet amongst themselves, just as they would any other packet, blissfully unaware that the IPv4 packet itself contains a complete IPv6 packet.  The IPv6 node on the receiving side of the tunnel eventually receives the IPv4 packet (it is the destination of the IPv4 packet!), determines that the IPv4 packet contains an IPv6 packet, extracts the IPv6 packet and then routes the IPv6 packet exactly as it would if it had received the IPv6 packet from a directly-connected IPv6 neighbor.
 
 


Figure 4.7-4: Tunneling

We end this section by mentioning that there is currently some doubt about whether IPv6 will make significant inroads into the Internet in the near future (2000-2002) or even ever at all [Garber 1999]. Indeed, at the time of this writing, a number of North American ISPs have said they don't plan to buy IPv6-enabled networking equipment. These ISPs say that there is little customer demand for IPv6's capabilities when IPv4, with some patches (such as network address translator boxes), is working well enough. On the other hand, there appears to be more interest in IPv6 in Europe and Asia. Thus the fate of IPv6 remains an open question.

One important lesson that we can learn from the IPv6 experience is that it is enormously difficult to change network-layer protocols. Since the early 1990s, numerous new network-layer protocols have been trumpeted as the next major revolution for the Internet, but most of these protocols have had minor (if any) penetration to date. These protocols include IPv6, multicast protocols (Section 4.8), and resource reservation protocols (Section 6.9). Indeed, introducing new protocols into the network layer is like replacing the foundation
of a house - it is difficult to do without tearing the whole house down or at least temporarily relocated the house's residents. On the other hand, the Internet has witnessed rapid deployment of new protocols at the application layer. The classic example, of course, is HTTP and the Web; other examples include audio and video streaming and chat. Introducing new application layer protocols is like adding a new layer of paint to a house -- it is relatively easy to do, and if you choose an attractive color, others in the neighborhood will copy you. In summary, in the future  we can expect to see changes in the Internet's network layer, but these changes will likely occur on a time scale that is much slower than the changes that will occur at the application layer.

References

[Garber 1999] L. Garber, 'Steve Deering on IP Next Generation," IEEE Computer, pp. 11-13, April 1999
[Gilligan 1996] R. Gilligan R. Callon, "IPv6 Transition Mechanisms Overview," in  in IPng: Internet Protocol Next Generation (S. Bradner, A. Mankin, ed), Adddison Wesley, 1996.
[Huitema 1997] C. Huitema, Ipv6 : The New Internet Protocol, Prentice Hall, 1997
[RFC 801] J. Postel, "NCP/TCP Transition Plan," RFC 801, Nov. 1981.
[RFC 1752] S. Bradner, A. Mankin, "The Recommendations for the IP Next Generation Protocol," RFC 1752, Jan. 1995.
[RFC 2460]  S. Deering and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification," RFC 2460, December 1998.
[RFC 1884] R. Hinden, S. Deering, "IP Version 6: addressing architecture", RFC 1884, December 1995.
[RFC 2463] A. Conta, S. Deering, "Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMPv6) for the Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), RFC 2463, December 1998.
[RFC 1993] R. Gilligan, E. Nordmark, "Transition Mechanisms for IPv6 Hosts and Routers,"  RFC 1933, April 1996.
[Solensky 1996] F. Solensky, "IPv4 Address Lifetime Expectations," in IPng: Internet Protocol Next Generation (S. Bradner, A. Mankin, ed), Adddison Wesley, 1996.


Copyright Keith W. Ross and Jim Kurose, 1996-2000.  All Rights Reserved.