A Study of Transition Mechanisim from IPv4 to IPv6

Abstract

The demand of the internet IP address is growing and current version of internet protocols is not capable of dealing with this demand so IETF developed the IPv6 to full fill this huge demand of IP address. The IPv6 was developed to keep two goals in mind one of which was more IP address and the second was Security. The first issue has been addressed but the second issue still has got some concerns. Now the IPv6 is here to replace the internet protocol version 4 which has been used by the millions of nodes and it is not possible for them to change to IPv6 in a single night, the reason for this is the huge area covered by the IPv4 and cost and resources required etc. So there is a requirement of a well thought plan for transition mechanism. It is quite obvious that IPv6 has to work with IPv4 and it will take a long time for IPv6 to completely takeover from IPv4. The process of transition from the present Internet Protocol version 4 to the upcoming Internet Protocol version 6 is in fact one of the most popular topic being contend specially around those  people who are working with the idea of  IPng (IP Next Generation) . The most important part or phase of the transition process is implementation of IPv6. Which is possible through clear vision and understanding about the network requirement and it also require a higher level of capability of understanding plus clear strategy and mechanism to smoothly move from IPv4 to IPv6. In this report I will focus on the transition mechanisms from IPv4 to IPv6. What are essential requirements for the smooth transition of the network from IPv4 to IPv6.What different mechanisms are available to achieve this transition effectively. I will keep my study limited to the network part only.