Deployment strategy and performance evaluation of the IPv6 home network using the home server

IPv6 is a foreseeable technology for the ubiquitous home networks due to the increasing numbers of the consumer electronics (CEs) and the explosive demands for the home network services that require end-to-end connectivity through the Internet. In order to provide services based on IPv6 at home, a new protocol stack is required due to the late deployment of the IPv6 in the current public networks. In this paper, a protocol stack that enables an IPv6 home network is implemented. The protocol stack includes IPv4/6 dual stacks, home-to-home tunneling, protocol transition and IPv6 multicast packet forwarding over home-to-home tunneling. The packet handling performance of the IPv6 home network is evaluated on a test-bed using a home server that establishes connections between CEs and the Internet. The performance results show that the implemented protocol stack is acceptable to deploy IPv6 at home. Additionally a novel IPv4/6 transition mechanism that supports interoperability among various IPv4/6 based CEs within a home network is proposed.