Next Generation Internet Protocol: A Survey on Current Issues and Migration?

The next-generation Internet Protocol (IPng) also known as IPv6, has been developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to replace the current Internet Protocol version 4.After being in use for almost three decades, the most compelling problem facing the IP Internet today is IP address depletion. The IPv4 extensions such as Sub netting, NAT, CIDR etc were short-term antidote solutions. Motivated by the perceived IP Address shortage crisis and needs of the modern internet, the idea of IPv6 was conceived in 1995 as a panacea to all the problems currently faced by IPv4. IPv6, the next version of the protocol, has provided trillions of addresses which are potentially inexhaustible. The protocol also establishes new features like SLAAC, Neighbor Discovery and improvements in QoS, Security, and Routing. To enable the integration of IPv6 into current operational networks, several transition mechanisms have been proposed by the IETF IPng Transition Working Group which includes Dual Stack, Tunneling, and Translation. The paper focuses to compare and analyze IPv4 and IPv6 networks, study their characteristics and header formats. The paper addresses the issues that are prevalent in IPv4 and explains the reasons for seamless migration to IPv6.The paper also discusses about established migration techniques and highlights their drawbacks from security and performance point of view.