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The active measurements the RIPE NCC carried out on World IPv6 Day on 8 June 2011 included ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) and ICMP6 (ICMP for IPv6) measurements from our vantage points to selected hostnames of World IPv6 Day participants and other dual-stacked parties. We used these measurements to determine the performance of IPv4 versus IPv6 connections.

The figure below shows a histogram of all relative IPv4 versus IPv6 performance data points collected during World IPv6 Day. A single data point consists of the ratio of IPv4 and IPv6 performance from a single vantage point to a single destination during a 10-minute interval.

The image shows that while this distribution has a bell shape, it is a little “fatter” on the IPv4 side. This means that IPv4 is faster more often than IPv6. What this tells us is that you are slightly better off in an IPv4-only environment than in an IPv6-only environment. On a dual-stack client that unconditionally prefers IPv6 to IPv4, IPv4 is more often the faster protocol, but this is far from a universal truth. There is also a significant chance that IPv6 is faster, since the “IPv6-is-faster” part of the histogram also has a significant volume.

Note that we measured ICMP and ICMP6, and not HTTP performance. Also, the IPv4 and IPv6 end points for a given hostname may be topologically and/or geographically in (very) different places, especially when proxies are used for IPv6 to IPv4 translation. In cases where the IPv4 and IPv6 destination end points are not at the same location, the distance between a vantage point and either the IPv4 or IPv6 destination end point has a large influence on the measured performance.

In conclusion, we can say that comparable IPv4 and IPv6 performance can be seen as an indication of a mature deployment of both IPv4 and IPv6 in a network. In the data we analysed, we see that IPv4 is still generally faster then IPv6, but for a significant fraction of measurements IPv6 is the faster protocol.

For more detailed information, please refer to the background article on RIPE Labs: Measuring World IPv6 Day — Comparing IPv4 and IPv6 Performance.

Written by Mirjam Kuehne

“Though the industry has been talking about IPv6 for over a decade, it’s finally enjoying a quiet evolution, with 83% of the service providers we interviewed already deploying IPv6 or planning to by next year, and all have plans of migrating. With IPv4 addresses running out in some places in the world by 2012, and as many as 15 billion machine-to-machine (M2M) devices expected to be connected to the Internet by 2015, each needing its own IP address, IPv6 migration has become a front-and-center issue for carriers,” notes Michael Howard, principal analyst and co-founder of Infonetics Research.

Complete info at FierceTelecom, Virtual-Strategy and TMCnet.

Facebook, Yahoo and others report decline in number of users having difficulty accessing dual-stack websites.
Complete info at NetworkWorld, ComputerWorld and CIO.

Meeting of Internet standards body indicates shift in IPv6 debate from content to carriers.
Complete info at NetworkWorld, CIO and ComputerWorld.

Bill Cerveny of Arbor Networks has a great post on IPv6 Fragmentation. It works a bit differently in IPv6 from IPv4 and it’s a very important difference. This is especially true when considering how to implement a security policy. Fragmentation is one of the few uses of IPv6 extension headers seen regularly in the wild today and must use Path-MTU to work effectively.

Erion is pleased to announce that we are running several of our world-leading IPv6 training courses as public events in London UK during October 2011. These include our Implementing IPv6, Securing IPv6 and Introduction to IPv6 courses.

From the 4th to the 7th October we are running our flagship 4-day Implementing IPv6 course. Developed over 13 years, this course covers all aspects of IPv6 in comprehensive detail and is ideal for all technical staff wishing to learn more about IPv6. This course includes extensive practical hands-on exercises. We will be running the Linux, Cisco IOS and Windows versions of this course in parallel. You have the option to chose to carry out hands-on exercises on Linux, Cisco IOS or Windows.

From the 10th to the 12th October we are running our 3-day Securing IPv6 course. This course includes a detailed analysis of the security risks associated with the introduction and deployment of the IPv6 protocol and how you should secure your network for IPv6. This course also includes extensive hands-on practical exercises, where you are able to use a number of IPv6 vulnerability testing tools and implement a range of IPv6 security features.

On the 13th October we are running our 1-day Introduction to IPv6 which is a comprehensive technical overview of IPv6.

Erion is the world’s leading provider of IPv6 training. We have the largest portfolio of IPv6 training courses, suitable for all audiences, covering all aspects of IPv6 on all major operating systems and platforms. Erion’s courses are certfieid by the IPv6 Forum and are part of the Erion IPv6 Certified training programme. In addition to our public IPv6 training schedule, we also provide IPv6 training as on-site courses and we provide Erion Modular IPv6 Training which allows for a bespoke training programme to be created based on our hundreds of IPv6 training modules.For further information please contact us on +44 (0)1422 207000, [email protected] or through our web-site contact form.

Copyright Erion Ltd 2011, all rights reserved. Permission to publish this article unchanged is hereby given.