“With the growth of Internet, will IPv4 survive?”
(Focus on security, quality of service, and migration method)

“We are about 10.2 percent (IPv4 address space) remaining globally,” John Curran, president and CEO of American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) told InternetNews.com in January 7, 2010. That is means, we will run out of Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) address space and the real difficult part is that there is no exact date. If things continue, we will have to say no for the very first time. Say no to an Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) request will be shocking to some organizations, which is why American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is trying to get the word out now on the importance of moving to Internet Protocol version six (IPv6). The Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) address space, the next generation of Internet Protocol (IP) addressing, provides 340 trillion trillion trillion (34x10 to the 38th power) internet addresses. The question is what will happen to Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) in future? Is Internet Prorocol version four (IPv4) may be available for a longer period of time? Before further discussing the topic, we should know what is Internet Protocol (IP). Internet Protocol (IP) is a set of technical rules that defines how computers communicate over a network. Now, there are two versions of Internet Protocol (IP), there are Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) and Interner Protocol version six (IPv6). Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) was the first version of Internet Protocol (IP) to be widely used, and accounts for most of today’s Internet traffic. There are just over four billion Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) addresses. While that is a lot of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, but it is not enough to last forever. Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) is a system of addresses used to identify devices on a network. Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) is the most widely used Internet layer protocal, and at this point is used by the vast majority of users to connect to the Internet. Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) addresses are actually 32-bit numbers. However, it has become clear that more addresses that this be required to ensure ongoing growth of the Internet. The unused poll of Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) addresses is predicted run out, so an alternative is required. Internet Protocol version six is an Intenet layer protocol as an alternative to Internet Protocol version four (IPv4). Rather that using 32-bit system, Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) is based on 128-bit addresses. Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) provides enough addresses to allow the Internet to continue to expand. Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) is a newer numbering system that provides a much larger address pool than Internet Protocol version four (IPv4). It was deployed in 1999 and should meet the world’s Internet Protocol (IP) addressing needs well into the future. The major difference between Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) is the number of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. There are 4, 294, 967, 296 Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) addresses. In contrast, there are 340, 282, 366, 920, 938, 463, 463, 374, 607, 431, 768, 211, 456 Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) addresses. The technical functioning of the Internet remains the same with both versions and it is likely that both versions will continue to operate simultaneously on networks well into the future. The challenge facing the Internet is based on the fact that the way of handing out Internet Protocol (IP) addresses was set up in the early 1980s. The current system known as Internet Protocol version four (IPv4 ) provides for around 4.4 billion unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. When this system was devised, this was thought to be more than enough. The Internet grew larger than anyone expected. The current estimate is that there are more than 100 million hosts and 350 million users actively on the Internet. It became clear, early in the 1990s that space might one day run out. There was nothing unexpected about the Internet running out of Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) addresses, except for how quickly the last few address blocks have been used up. Rod Beckstrom, Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)’s President and CEO said in the announcement “This is truly a major turning point in the on-going development of the Internet. Nobody was caught off guard by this, the Internet technical community has been planning for IPv4 depletion for quite some time. But it means the adoption of IPv6 is now of paramount importance, since it will allow the Internet to continue its amazing growth and foster the global innovation we’ve all come to expect.” Most of today's Internet uses Internet Protocol version four (IPv4), which is now nearly twenty years old. Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) has been remarkably resilient in spite of its age, but it is beginning to have problems. Most importantly, there is a growing shortage of Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) addresses, which are needed by all new machines added to the Internet. The entire Internet protocol version four address space provides approximately 4.3 billion unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. With a current world population of more than 7 billion, that is not enough for even one Internet Protocol (IP) address per person. Nowadays people use multiple methods, such as mobile iPads, phones and laptops, to access Internet content, the number of unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses required per person has increased significantly. Nowadays, security is certainly one of the biggest challenges faced by network managers. Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) was designes with no security at that moment. Because of it is end-to-end model, Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) relies on the end-hosts to provide the appropriate security during communication. There are security threats on Internet Protocol version four (IPv4), such as Denial of Service Attacks (DOS), viruses and worms distribution, Man-in-the-middle attacks (MITM), fragmentation attacks, port scanning and reconnaissance, and ARP Poison. Denial of Service Attacks (DOS), it is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. One common method involves flooding the target host with requests, thus preventing valid network traffic to reach the host Second threat on Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) is viruses and worms distribution. These malicious code or programs can propagate themselves from one infected or compromised hosts to another. This distribution is aided by the small address space of Internet Protocol version four (IPv4). The 3rd threat on Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) is Man-in-the-middle attacks (MITM). An attacker is able to read, insert and modify at will messages between two hosts without either hosts knowing that their communication has been compromised. This is because Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) lack of suitable authentication mechanisms. The 4th thread on Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) is fragmentation attacks. Different Operating system has their own method to handle large Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) packets and this attack exploits that method. For example the “ping of death” attacks. This attack uses many small fragmented ICMP packets which when reassembled at the destination exceed the maximum allowable size for an Internet Protocol (IP) datagram which can cause the victim host to crash, hang or even reboot. Fiveth thread on Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) is Port scanning and reconnaissance. This is used to scan for multiple listening ports on a single, multiple or an entire network hosts. Open ports can be used to exploit the specific hosts further. Because of the small address space, port scanning is easy in Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) architecture. And last thread on Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) is ARP Poison. ARP poison attack is to send fake, or ‘spoofed’, ARP messages to a network. The aim is to associate the attacker’s MAC address with the Internet Protocol (IP) address of another node. Any traffic meant for that Internet Protocol (IP) address would be mistakenly sent to the attacker instead. Many techniques or method had been developed to overcome the abovementioned security issues. For instance, the use of ‘IPSec’ to aid the use of encrypted communication between hosts, but this is still optional and continues to be the main responsibility of the end hosts. Support for IPSec in Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) implementations is not an option but a requirement. IPSec consists of a set of cryptographic protocols that provide for securing data communication and key exchange. IPSec uses two wire-level protocols, there are Authentication Header (AH) and Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP). Authentication Header (AH) provides for authentication and data integrity. While Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) provides for authentication, data integrity, and confidentiality. In IPv6 networks, both the Authentication Header (AH) header and the Security Payload (ESP) header are defined as extension headers. Additionally, IPSec provides for a third suite of protocols for protocol negotiation and key exchange management known as the Internet Key Exchange (IKE). This protocol suite provides the initial functionality needed to establish and negotiating security parameters between endpoints. In addition it keeps track of this information to ensure secure communication at all times. So, is Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) more secure than Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) or is it just a misunderstanding turned into an Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) marketing pitch? So as a conclusion, an Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) is not more secure than Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) as a protocol set. Most of the security challenges faced by an Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) remain in an Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) environments. Network managers must control the Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) traffic as they do for Internet Protocol version four (IPv4). IPsec can be leveraged to secure Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) environments when possible but a global network of IPsec peer-to-peer communication is far from becoming reality, if such a reality is ever possible or desired. Quality of Service (QoS ) developments in Internet Protocol (IP) networks is motivated by new types of applications such as VoIP, audio or video streaming, interactive gaming, networked virtual environments, video distribution, videoconferencing, e-commerce, etc. Quality of Service (QoS ) is a set of service requirements for performance guarantees to be met by the network while transporting a flow. Performance guarantees are usually assessed with the next metrics such as bandwidth, delay, inter-packet delay variation (Jitter) and packet loss. Does Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) offer better Quality of Service (QoS)? Quality of Service (QoS) in Internet Protocol (IP) networks is delivered in the context of two architectures. First architecture is Differentiated Services (DiffServ). Differentiated Services (DiffServ) relies on each network element allocating resources to the forwarding of a packet based on a 6-bit classifier (differentiated code point) carried in the packet header. Second architecture, Integrated Services (IntServ). Integrated Services (IntServ) relies on the Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) signaling protocol to set up resources along the path of packets with given transport requirements. Conceptually, Quality of Service (QoS) relates to applications. For example, to make sure high quality for phone calls established over Internet Protocol (IP), VoIP packets has higher priority compared to other traffic types. Means that Quality of service (QoS) policies should be independent of Internet Protocol (IP) version and should depend on application types. Thus, in a dual-stack network, the same priority is assigned to the packets of a given application independent of the Internet Protocol (IP) version it runs over. However, for those very specific conditions that require one Internet Protocol (IP) version to be privileged over the other, it is possible to assign different priorities based on Internet Protocol (IP) version. Why do we read in some publication that Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) offers better Quality of service (QoS) than Internet Protocol version four (IPv4)? The reasons is because of the presence of a 20-bit field named Flow Label in the main Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) header, a field that does not exist in Internet Protocol version four (IPv4). The Flow Label field, is used by a source to label packets of the same flow. Its definition to make sure that the value of information carried cannot be modified by intermediate systems. The Flow Label field is currently unused and may not have practical value in the overall Internet where no definition of Flow Label value has been published or agreed upon by service providers. However, these 20-bits in the main Internet Protocol (IP) header are very precious real, so forms of Flow Label usage will surely be developed in the future. As a conclusion, Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) Quality of service (QoS) is neither better nor worse than Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) Quality of service (QoS). It follows the same architectural models and faces the same inherent challenges. At this time, the presence of the 20-bit Flow Label field in the Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) header is not enough to justify the claim of better Quality of service (QoS). On the other side, is Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) required for mobility? Before further discussing the topic, it is important to clarify what means by “mobility”. A mobile client is a device such as a PDA, laptop, smartphone, iPod, or sensor that regularly changes location but does not necessarily have its own network interface. For example, an Apple iPod will connect through a PC to download contents. An application that runs on a mobile device is a mobile application. Popular audio or video contents (for example, podcasts) consist of files that are downloaded to mobile devices and used later with no need for Internet connectivity. By contrast, VoIP is an example of an application that requires the mobile client to be always connected. They enable mobile devices and applications to be used in any covered location. The mobility features relevant to an Internet Protocol (IP) discussion are Layer 3 mobility, mobile networks, and ad hoc networking. IP Mobility is generally synonymous with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) protocol suite called Mobile IP (MIP) that has been standardized for both Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version six (IPv6). For example, handheld devices compliant with standards from 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). From 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), its becomes evident that today we are dealing with billions of mobile devices. This type of environment requires the large address space provided by Internet Protocol version six (IPv6). From 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has also addressed the delivery of converged voice, data, and video to mobile devices through the Internet Protocol (IP) Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) standard. IMS requires Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) support, to ensure that each mobile phone is individually addressable with a persistent address for full bidirectional services. There is more to MIPv6 than just the support of large-scale deployments. This makes Internet Protocol (IP) mobility an integrated feature of the Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) as required by RFC 1752 and enables it to easily add capabilities such as path optimization between mobile nodes and their communication peer. Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) is not required for mobility. However, Layer 3 mobility, also named IP mobility, is integrated in the protocol rather than being an add-on, as in the case of Protocol version four (IPv4). The market is developing new business models, new communities of interest, and new products based on standardized protocols like Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) and Networks Mobility (NEMO). This will make mobility easier to deploy and capable of supporting a much larger number of more full featured handsets and other new devices supporting multi-mode wireless radio, video, and VoIP. The use of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and other higher-level standards requiring IPv6 support will offer a platform for new maketable products and services not possible with IPv4. Last but not least, Internet Protocol version six (IPv) is going to live on alongside Internet Protocol version four (IPv4). So in future , Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) will survive with it own ways. Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) divide addresses into two parts, there are ‘a network identifier’ and ‘a host identifier’ inside a network. Originally, only the first octet of the number identified the network part, the remaining three are used to identify the host device. Then the idea of a ‘class-based address architecture’ was born. The initial 8/24 bit structure are called as a Class A. Class A allowed up to 127 networks and 16,777,216 host identities. The remaining space was split into 16/16 bits. It allowing up to 16,128 networks, each with up to 65,536 hosts. It is called as Class B. Class C space is divided using a 24/8 bit structure. It allowing for 2,031,616 networks, and up to 256 hosts. The remaining 1/8 of the space was held in reserve. The fact shows, one day the space might run out. There was nothing unexpected about the Internet running out of Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) addresses, except for how quickly the last few address blocks have been used up.What is all of this fuss about the IPv6 transition about? The simplest way to explain the situation is that the current Internet can stay working as it does, using Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) addresses, forever if we are okay with it not growing any more. If no more homes and businesses wanted to get on the Internet, and no more new phones or tablets were produced, and no more websites or applications were created. The long-term objective is to move the whole Internet to the IPv6 standard in order to eliminate the stifling effect of impending and inevitable Internet Protocol (IP) address shortages. It is estimated that there are roughly 2.5 billion current connections to the Internet today, so to say the transition has a lot of moving parts would be an understatement. In the very near future, end-users and servers will no longer be able to get Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) connections to the Internet, and will only connect through Internet Protocol version six (IPv6). The primary transition plan is to “dual-stack” all current devices by adding IPv6 support to everything that currently has an Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) address. By adding Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) functionality to devices using Internet Protocol version four (IPv4), all of that connectivity will be able to connect through Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) without transitional technologies like Network Address Translation (NAT). This work will take several years. Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) is not going to disappear after a certain date. There will still be devices that depend upon IPv4. So what is going to happen? Various technologies are being used to ensure network interoperability. A dual stack, with a packet containing both Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) addresses is the primary method of connectivity right now, but this reduces the Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) functionality and inherent efficiency of the protocol. Other methods such as various forms of network tunneling can be implemented as well, but as of yet, there is no standard. As time goes on, Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) is going to live on alongside Internet Protocol version four (IPv4). Migrating from Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) to Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) in an instant is impossible because of the huge size of the Internet and of the great number of Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) users. Moreover, many organizations are becoming more and more dependent on the Internet for their daily work, and they therefore cannot tolerate downtime for the replacement of the IP protocol. As a result, there will not be one special day on which Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) will be turned off and Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) turned on because the two protocols can coexist without any problems. The migration from Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) to Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) must be implemented node by node by using autoconfiguration procedures to eliminate the need to configure Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) hosts manually. This way, users can immediately benefit from the many advantages of Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) while maintaining the possibility of communicating with Protocol version four (IPv4) users or peripherals. The fact is the vast majority of the devices connected to the Internet today are not compatible with Internet Protocol version six (IPv6), and the dual stack technology ensures that legacy Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) devices will still work for the foreseeable future and legacy Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) hardware should continue to function well into the future. There is no need to turn it off so long as Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) applications still remain in use. So as conclusion, I strongly state my opinion that Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) will survive in future and Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) will coexist with Internet Protocol version six (IPv6).

Reference

Title: IPv6: Dual-stack where you can; tunnel where you must
Author: Scott Hogg, Network World, May 9, 2007
Link: http://www.networkworld.com/news/tech/2007/090507-tech-uodate.html?page=1

Title: IPv6 Security Issues
Author: Samuel Sotillo, East Carolina University
Link: http://www.infosecwriters.com/text_resources/pdf/IPv6_SSotillo.pdf

Title: Security Implications of IPv6
Author: Michael H. Warfield
Link: http://documents.iss.net/whitepapers/IPv6.pdf

Title: 6to4
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6to4

Title: Technical and Economic Assessment of Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6)
Author: IPv6 Task Force, U.S. Department of Commerce
Link: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/ntiageneral/ipv6/final/ipv6final3.htm

Title: Cisco IOS IPv6 Services Integration and Co-Existence
Author: Patrick Grossetete, Cisco System, Cisco IOS IPv6 Product Manager
Link: www.ipv6.or.kr/ipv6summit/Download/3rd-day/Session-IV/s-4-1.ppt

Title: IPv6-to-IPv4 Transition and Security Issues
Author: Block K, Information Technology & State Store Building, Jalan Gadong, BE1110 Brunei Darussalam, February 20, 2008.
Link: http://www.brucert.org.bn/files/IPv6-to-IPv4%20Transition%20&%20Security%20Issues.pdf

Title: Guidelines for the Secure Deployment of IPv6
Author: Sheila Frankel, Richard Graveman, John Pearce and Mark Rooks
Link http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-119/sp800-119.pdf