Dynamic routing implementation decision between OSPFv3 and is–is for real–time applications in IPv6 networks

The current growth of the internet resulting in IPv4 address space exhaustion has given IPv6 the legitimacy and inevitability that cannot be ignored.IPv6 is the next–generation internet protocol developed to replace IPv4 in the future. IPv6 is an innovate step from IPv4. However, both protocols differ in header structure. The difference in header structure between the two protocols means that routing network traffic in IPv6 will no longer be supported by the conventional routing protocols used in IPv4. New routing protocols that are supported by IPv6 must be used. Also even though there are different IPv6 supported routing protocols, these protocols operate based on different routing algorithms and therefore differ in their routing characteristics. For instance not all routing protocols have the same scalability. Scalability of a routing protocol enables that protocol to automatically adapt to any change in network topology. For example when a new network is added to an existing network, dynamic routing protocols are able to discover the new network automatically. Also when there is a node or a route failure, they are able to determine alternative routes and retransmit traffic via these routes with minimal disruption. Routing protocol scalability is essential when considering current network growth rate. Therefore when deciding on which routing protocol to implement on a network, the protocol that scales well must be chosen. Choice of a suitable routing protocol for implementation does not only depend on routing protocol scalability. During this stage in the network design, other factors are considered in order to select which protocol will be the most appropriate to route network traffic.These factors are usually considered on the basis of some parameters that are used to determine which protocol will perform better than others whenever there are different routing protocols available. The routing protocol with the best performance in terms of these parameters is considered the most suitable protocol and is selected for implementation. In this thesis, performance of two link state protocols for IPv6, OSPFv3 and IS–IS has been evaluated and vi compared for the most frequently used enterprise applications such as database query, remote login, file transfer, email and web browsing using Riverbed Modeler Academic Edition 17.5. Performance evaluation is based on network convergence duration, IPv6 packets dropped, throughput, link utilization, database query response time, remote login response time, file download/upload response times, email and http page response times as the main parameters. The main objective of this thesis is to simulate, compare and analyze the performance of both routing protocols in order to determine which protocol will be the more suitable one for routing network traffics in IPv6. The protocol which performed better than the other on the basis of the parameters used will then be recommended for routing network traffic in IPv6. In order to achieve this objective, the entire work was divided into two scenarios: OSPFv3 scenario and IS–IS scenario. The network topology used is a model of an IPv6 enterprise network. Scenario one is the OSPFv3 scenario. In this scenario, only OSPFv3 was configured and then simulated against the proposed parameters. Results obtained from the simulation was observed and recorded. Scenario two is the IS–IS scenario. This scenario is a duplicate of the OSPFv3 scenario but only IS–IS was configured in it. This scenario was also simulated using the same parameters used to simulate the OSPFv3 scenario. Results obtained from this scenario was also observed and recorded. After the simulation was performed for the IS–IS scenario, results obtained from both scenarios on the basis of the proposed parameters were compared and analyzed to determine which protocol performed better than the other. Overall, simulation results obtained have indicated that IS–IS performed better than OSPFv3 on the basis of most of the simulation parameters used.

Source: KNUST