INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY AND COMPUTING (IJTC)

ISSN-2455-099X,

Volume 3, Issue 9 September 2017

IJTC201709006 www. ijtc.org 356

Analysis of IPV-4 and IPV-6 in Networking 1Sahil Mathew, 2Nipun Gulti, 3Megha Sharma

12B.Tech (CSE), 3BCA

123CGC Technical Campus, Jhanjeri (Mohali), India

1sahilmathew100@gmail.com, 2nipungulati623@gmail.com, 3megha.sharma667760@gmail.com

Abstract: IPv4 addresses are not making up the demand of increasing clients. IPV4 addresses have contains 32 bit length; while in IPV6

addresses contains 128 bit. As we know that IPV4 addresses are in binary numbers and represented in decimal; while IPV6 addresses

are binary and represented in hexadecimal number. Journey has to be completed from IPv4 to IPv6 because in addition to increase the

number of IP addresses it’s efficiency, design, security and many other additional profits are also gained. IPv6 is going to overcome all

the disadvantages of IPv4. Presently, IPv6 over IPv4 tunnels are widely used to form the global IPv6 Internet. As we already know that

Internet Protocol (IPv6) has been developed to replace the Internet Protocol (IPv4).Transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is a obligatory process

in the realization of global Internet. The development of IPv6 technology and continuous increases in application, but this process will

take long time so a transition method will be needed. There are many IPv4/IPv6 transition methods already exist today, some of them

applied in practice and other are still as proposed solutions. IPV4 has less secured than IPV6. It means that introduce IPV6 has high

security inbuilt features as compare to IPV4. Tunnelling and encapsulation methods are the mainly techniques that used until now, but

all encapsulation mechanisms suffer from the increasing of the overhead traffic network as a result for either encapsulating IPv4 packet

in the IPv6 packet or encapsulating IPv6 packet in the IPv4 packet. In this paper we just analysis the IPV4 and IPV6 features, uses and

its characteristics that how these protocols are used in networking.

Keywords: IPv4, IPv6, Security comparison, IP threats, IP attacks.

I. INTRODUCTION

Internet protocol address (IP address) i.e a numerical label

for each device connected to a data network uses internet

protocol for communication. Every machine on a network

has a unique identifier. Just as you would write receiver’s

address on the letter, computers use the unique identifier

to send data to specific computers on a network. Most

networks today, including all computers on the Internet,

use the TCP/IP protocol as the standard for how to

communicate on the network. In the TCP/IP protocol, the

unique identifier for a computer is called its IP address.

There are currently two major versions of Internet

Protocol. The Internet Protocol version 4(IPv4) and

Internet Protocol version 6(IPv6).So you must be

wandering about IPv1, IPv2, IPv3 and IPv5? We actually

did not started with IPv1,IPv2 or IPv3 instead we directly

jumped to IPv4 and then to IPv6.See at back that time,

computers were not expected to be so wide spread. People

were against it.IPv1 would provide merely 256

(28)computers as It uses 8 bits for its internet addresses so

we definitely have to jump on the next versions talking

about IPv2 it would provide IP addresses to about

65,536(216) computers similarly when we go higher, the

number got bigger and we started with Ipv4. But the main

reason was, IPv1, IPv2 or IPv3 were all merged into

TCP/IP. These lay the backbone of our network traffic.

The IPv5 is called Internet Stream Protocol, it was an

experimental protocol but it possessed some problems

with speeds and bandwidth so the network enthusiasts

jumped to IPv6. As a web developer or website owner it is

always good to stay informed about how changing

protocols, such as IPv4, IPv6, and even HTTP/2 affect us.

IPv4 addresses are pretty much exhausted now which

means the world is transitioning to IPv6. This enables the

internet to continue to grow and ensure that as many

devices as possible can connect to the internet. Today, we

want to dive into the difference between IPv4 and IPV6,

and also touch on the subject of what happened with IPv5.

IPv6 is the next generation Internet Protocol (IP) address

standard intended to supplement and eventually replace

IPv4, the protocol most Internet services use today. Every

computer, mobile phone and any other device connected to the

Internet needs a numerical IP address in order to communicate

with other devices. It is in our knowledge that IPv4 consists of

five classes, A, B, C, D, E. Classes A, B and C have a different

bit length for addressing a network host, Class D addresses are

reserved for multicasting while class E addresses are reserved for

future use. IPv4 uses a 32 bit addressing already mentioned in

abstract part, which amounts to 4,294,967,296 unique addresses

[1]. An example of an IPv4 address is “158.80.164.3”, it involves

four octets of 8 bits each all resulting to a 32 – bit address [5]. In

binary form, it would look like

10011110.01010000.10100100.00000011 for the four octet.

Internet Protocol (IPv6 or IPng) is the next generation of IP and

it is the successor of IP version 4 which is widely used nowadays.

The development of IPv6 started in 19 91 and was completed in

1997 by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and was

officially used in 2004 when ICANN added IPv6 addresses to its

DNS server [2]. Data transfers between hosts in packets across

networks, these packets require addressing schemes. Using IPv4

and IPv6 these packets can identify their sources and also find

their destinations. Every device on the Internet needs an IP

address to communicate with other devices, and the growth of the

Internet led to a need for a new alternative for IPv4, because IPv4

cannot provide the needed number of IP address around the world

[9].

II. CHALLENGES OF NETWORKING

As the Internet and the number of people using it grows

exponentially, so does the need for IP addresses so scarcity of IPv4

addresses shoot. It uses 32 bit for its internet addresses therefore

it supports 232 IP addresses i.e around 4.29 billion which will

become scarce commodity in next 2 years. Security related issues

also prevail as network security threats were not anticipated back

then. Type of Service (TOS) Field in an IPv4 header is used for

Quality of Service (QOS) Purposes. There are lot of different

type of data travelling in a network and some has higher

importance than other. Higher priority data should be processed

first because it could contain packets which are important to run

network communication such as routing protocols data. Thus

TOS field categories difference priority of data, so that a network

device could process important data first and less important after

that. TOS bit value, higer has more priority. Address

IJTC.O

RG

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY AND COMPUTING (IJTC)

ISSN-2455-099X,

Volume 3, Issue 9 September 2017

IJTC201709006 www. ijtc.org 357

configuration is not that simple even in case of Quality of

Service (QoS) which relies on the 8 bits of the ipv4 type

of service (TOS) field has limited functionality and

payload identification is not possible when the ipv4

datagram packet payload is encrypted.

III. SECURITY OF IPV4

Security for IPv4 is achieved by the use of Internet

Protocol Security (IPSec), which is the proven standard for

securing IP communications by encrypting and/or

authenticating all IP packets at the network layer.

However, the use of it is optional for IPv4

implementations, making some users unaware of the lack

of security their internet version holds. IPv4 does not have

a built in security protocol, making security dependent on

applications that have to be installed and implemented by

the user [6]. Since an application cannot rely on IPSec

being present to secure traffic, it may resort to other

security standards or a proprietary security scheme. Built-

in security is very crucial in today’s increasingly hostile

environment on the Internet, making IPv4 completely

inferior to IPv6 when security is concerned. Unlike IPv4,

IPv6 support for IPSec protocol headers is required and it’s

an integral base of the protocol suite in IPv6. When IPv4

was designed, security was (intentionally, according to

some participants) left out of the design; no encryption, no

authentication, no identity verification. IPV4 contains

limited address and this limited address does not meet the

growth of Internet. IPv4 is the first version of Internet

Protocol and most of the internet traffic is caused by it as

almost all the available IP addresses are of IPv4. This

protocol work at network layer of the TCP/IP model and

this protocol has the responsibility of identifying hosts

(The Host Identity Protocol (HIP) is a host identification

technology for use on Internet Protocol (IP) networks,

such as internet) based upon their logical address to route

data among them over the underlying network as to

actually communicate, two devices must have their IP

address in the same network [6]. How come you can still

get IP addresses from your service providers as IPv4 is

running out? The answer is simple. Your Internet service

provider hands you a single Internet Protocol address and

your router shares it amongst all the connected devices in

your home.

IV. SECURITY OF IPV6

Switching to IPV6 seem to solve the problem but leaders

of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) admits that

they did not do a good enough job in compatibility with

the existing internet Protocol IPV4. It is estimated that the

entire IPv4 based Internet can be scanned in about 10 hours

with enough bandwidth 8 given that IPv4 addresses are

only 32 bits wide. IPv6 is mostly IPv4 with larger

addresses and there is no significant difference between

IPv4 and IPv6 with respect to security. In some cases (link-

local addresses) IPv6 is slightly more secure, and in other

cases (difficulties to parse the extension headers) IPv6 is

slightly less secure. Some IPv6 security myths simply do

not stand. Security techniques and devices do exist to

enforce a security policy for the IPv6 traffic and should be

used. IPv6 was designed to protect data. Unreasonably, its

deployment may sometimes lead to decreasing security

level, especially in the transformation period. The

operating system vendors long ago started to support IPv6 in their

products. Nevertheless interoperability and compatibility tests of

IPv6 implementations show some implementation problems.

Let’s suppose you have five devices connected to a single router.

If someone wants to send you a mail directly to your PC’s IP

address then they can’t. First the router will get the information

and then it will decide to which device this mail belongs. All It’s

disadvantages has to be overcome by IPv6 but one of the major

challenges in the internet is to display IPv6 [1]. IPv6 is the sixth

revision to Internet Protocol and the successor to IPv4. IPV6 was

developed with the compatibility of supporting 2128 internet

addresses i.e. 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000 to be exact as it utilizes 128 bits [4]. It functions similar

to IPv4 but was satisfying advantages. Most of the operating

systems today support Ipv6 addressing scheme and have Ipv6

enabled by default. IPV6 has given us a more security as compare

to IPV4, because Native support for end-to-end encryption: This

was a feature that was added much later to IPv4, but comes as a

standard for IPv6.

Secure neighbor discovery: The improved protocol (SEND)

for neighbor discovery in IPv6 actually confirms the identity of

the other party during host discovery, using a cryptographic

method.

Larger address space: More time needed to brute force

through addresses (3.4 × 1038 vs the older 4.3 × 109)

V. COMPARISON BETWEEN IPV4 AND IPV6

IPV4 IPV6

It has 32 bit address length It has 128 bit address length

IPSec support is only

optional.

It has inbuilt IPSec support

No packet flow

identification

Packet flow identification is

available within the IPv6

header using the Flow Label

field.

Broadcast messages are

available.

Broadcast messages are not

available. Instead a link-

local scope "All nodes"

multicast IPv6 address

(FF02::1) is used for

broadcast similar

functionality.

Manual configuration

(Static) of IPv4 addresses.

Auto configuration address

is available

Checksum field is available

in IPV4 header.

No checksum field is

available in IPV6 header.

V. CONCLUSION

In IPV4 route devices could not connect after 255 routers because

in IPv4 they can only ping upon 255 routers only, for the

upcoming population and requirement of IP address we must shift

to IPv6 but due to the lack of backward compatibility of IPv6

with IPv4 new method has to be followed i.e coexistence of IPv4

and IPv6.

IJTC.O

RG

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY AND COMPUTING (IJTC)

ISSN-2455-099X,

Volume 3, Issue 9 September 2017

IJTC201709006 www. ijtc.org 358

REFERENCES

[1]. Dipti Chauhan, Sanjay Sharma,” A survey on next

Generation Internet Protocol: IPV6”, International

Journal of Electronic and Electrical Engineering vol

2, no.2, June, 2014.

[2]. Mohd .Khairil Sailan, Rosil Hassan, Ahmed

Patel,”A comparative review of IPV4 and IPV6 for

Research Test Bed”, International conference on

Electrical Engineering and Informatics, 5-7 August

2009.

[3]. Amer Nizar Abu ali,”Comparison study between

IPV4 and IPV6”, International Journal of

computer science issue, vol.9 Issue3, no 1, May 2012.

[4]. G.Huston,”IPV4 Address Report,” Tech. Rep. ,Sep 2010.

[5]. Loan Raichu, Sherali Zeadally,” Evaluating IPv4 to IPv6

Tansition Mechanisms”.

[6]. ipv6security.wikia.com/wiki/

[7]. ip6now.com.au/benefits.php

[8]. https://www.keycdn.com/blog/difference-between-ipv4-

and-ipv6/

[9]. Saurabh Dey and Shilpa N., “Issues in IPv4 to IPv6

Migration”, International Journal of Computer

Applications in Engineering Sciences, Vol. 1, Issue1, pp.

9 -13, March 2011

IJTC.O

RG