IPv6 implementation : dual stack

Abstract

IPv6 was proposed in the early 1990s to tackle the depletion of IPv4 addressing space. To ease the transition process from IPv4 to IPv6, a number of transition methods were also proposed. The IPv6 Dual Stack implementation is one of these proposed transition techniques. This thesis was carried out with the goal of creating a teaching and test environ-ment for the Dual Stack implementation of IPv6 and its associated services. An internet connected IPv6 network was intended but due to some difficulties, a Lo-cal Area Network became the fall-back plan. A Cisco 7200VXR NPE-G2 and a Linux machine running Ubuntu 12.10 distribution were used as core devices to provide three LANs and a DHCP server. Cisco Catalyst 2950 and 2960 switch were used to provide connection for multiple Windows 7 client nodes in the LANs. At the completion of the thesis, a three LAN Dual Stack network that is capable of stateless and stateful auto-configurations was created and documented. An easy-to-read theoretical documentation of IPv6 services such as ICMPv6, DHCPv6 and Neighbour Discovery and IPv6 addressing and different IPv6 implementation mechanisms was created. Also documented are the well explained step-by-step implementations of stateless and stateful address auto-configurations.