OpenFlow-based IPv6 Rapid Deployment mechanism

Abstract

As more devices are connected to the Internet, the speed of global IPv4 address depletion also gets faster and faster. Although IETF proposed IPv6 to solve the problem of IPv4 address exhaustion, replacing the underlying protocol of the Internet is a complicated task. It is expected that the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 will take several years. Among proposed transition mechanisms, IPv6 Rapid Deployment (6rd) is a tunneling mechanism similar to 6to4, which was proposed to promote IPv6 deployment utilizing current IPv4 infrastructure. Although it was reported that some ISP utilized 6rd to successfully made millions of users IPv6-ready, the same model may not be always easily duplicated by other ISPs. In this paper, we propose a new approach which allows ISPs using OpenFlow to rapidly provide connection to IPv6 customer networks. Moreover, this OpenFlow-based approach provides security services such as intrusion prevention system (IPS) and management services such as load-balancing and quality of service. Experimental evaluation shows that the overhead of the tunneling mechanism degrades about 10% of performance, which is acceptable at the initial stage compared with the efficiency of rapid IPv6 deployment.