The IPv6 Deployment in Taiwan Academic Network

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1 The IPv6 Deployment in Taiwan Academic Network Reen-Cheng Wang, Han-Chieh Chao 1 and Michelle Kao 2 Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, 1 Department of Electrical Engineering, 2 Institute of Education, National Dong Hwa University rcwang@mail.ndhu.edu.tw Abstract With the rapid growth of Internet applications, IA, and 3G Wireless Communications, the requirement of IP address is beyond our imagination for decades ago. IPv4, the most common Internet Protocol we are using today, is unable to satisfy the explosively requirements in the future. In our prediction, the IPv4 addresses will totally exhausted between This eager starvation points out the strongly requirement of next generation Internet protocol IPv6. Besides, the support of mobility, security, and Multimedia QoS are the other reasons for the implementation of IPv6 protocol. Within this trend, a project to deploy serials of IPv6 solutions in Taiwan Academic networks is implementing. Within this project, we are trying to build up a native IPv6 backbone in Taiwan. Both practical implementations and research-oriented studies are to construct the next generation network infrastructure in Taiwan. Few years ago, some IPv6 researches and testing between universities in Taiwan were carried out. There were between National Dong-Hwa University (NDHU), National Tsing-Hwa University (NTHU), and National Chung-Cheng University (CCU) to build up a tunneled IPv6 network on the National Broadband Experimental Network (NBEN). But in our experiments, we realize that construct an IPv6 backbone without applications are unrealistic. Only applications can attract more and more people to join this area. This is what we are focused on now: building up IPv6 applications on the Internet. 1. Introduction For the Internet to continue its extraordinary growth, the limitation of IPv4 becomes a serious problem. The 32-bit-long addressing space can support about 4 billions of IP-based Dr. Chao also currently serves as the co-chair of the IPv6 Research and Development Division of the IPv6 Steering Committee that is supervised by the NICI (National Information and Communication Initiative, a ministry level government agency which aims to integrate domestic IT and Telecom projects) in Taiwan and the co-chair of Technical Area in IPv6 Forum Taiwan. Mr. Wang is serving as the liaison of the IPv6 R&D Division of the IPv6 Steering Committee.

2 devices on the Internet. But owing to the addressing space is not well assigned at the beginning; it is still insufficient in many companies and countries. Although there are some new technologies, such as Network Address Translation (NAT) or Classless InterDomain Routing (CIDR), proposed to relieve the problems, the limitation of network connection and IP shortage are still unsolved. Besides, the IPv4 protocol transmits packets in best effort. It makes another problem that there is lack of QoS support. In the recent days, there are more and more commercial documents and important data transferred on the Internet. It is important to maintain the security of the information, especially in the mobile environment. However, the IPv4 protocol doesn t include the issue into consideration. Multimedia streaming is another popular application on the Internet. But IPv4 protocol does not come with the ability of real-time control. This makes the streaming jittered frequently. With the cost-down and the improvement of wireless technology, more and more people own wireless network devices. It is a big problem to assign IP to these mobile devices. For solving these problems, IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) proposed a next generation Internet Protocol in 1995, which we called IPng or IPv6. The simplified of IP header in IPv6 protocol can accelerate the processing speed of network device. The 128 bits address length extremely expands the addressing space. The addition of extension headers and option fields promote the routing efficiency. On the other hand, IPv6 protocol adds fields of traffic class and flow label. These are making the QoS services working successfully. Especially for those multimedia streaming applications. Besides, IPv6 protocol includes many functions for future networks. Such as the plug and play, security authentication, priority levels and etc. 2. Deployment Project in Taiwan There are many research groups (6Bone, 6REN, IPv6 forum, KAME Project) and venders (Cisco, Telebit, Microsoft, Nortel, 3Com, Nokia, Lucent, etc.) developing v6-related applications and platforms in the world. In Taiwan, a backbone network - National Broadband Experimental Network (NBEN) is contructed for advanced network technologies research.

3 Figure 1. NBEN Topology As the topology shown in Figure 1, NBEN connects eleven academic research institutes, including National Taiwan University (NTU), National Central University (NCU), Chunghwa Telecommunication Laboratories (CHTTL), National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC), National Tsing Hwa University (NTHU), National Chiao Tung University (NCTU), National Chung Hsing University (NCHU), National Chung Cheng University (CCU), National Dong Hwa University (NDHU), National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), and National Sun Yat-Sen University (NSYSU). Lots of solutions for next generation network are testing on the net. One of these is the next generation Internet Protocol IPv6. Currently there are IPv6 tunnels between NDHU, NTHU, CCU, CHTTL, and NCHC. Two of the top three ISPs, including TANet and Hinet, already got commercial IPv6 TLAs. At the beginning of our project, we were trying to construct the IPv6 network with the IPv4-compatable ability. Most of the Internet resources today are running with IPv4. Without the IPv4-compatable ability, very few resources are left to attract people to use it. Dual stack for our servers and tunneling between networks are adopted for phase one. In the recent years, many vendors have built IPv6 protocol stacks into their operation systems. Such as Solaris8 by Sun Microsystems, Windows 2000+MSR IPv6 or WindowsXP by Microsoft, Linux, FreeBSD+KAME project, and etc. With these IPv6 ready systems, we can easily build up IPv6 platforms by tuning some necessaries or adding the components that we have developed. After reviewing these operation systems, we selected Linux as our platform as our primary stage. The main reason is that Linux is an open source operation systems with many volunteer developers. From kernel version 2.1.8, IPv6 becomes a build-in module. Base on this convenience, we have successfully built ftp servers, telnet servers, smtp

servers, http servers, pop3 servers, dns servers, and etc. Some other applications are still developing. Figure 2 shows these applications. Figure 2. IPv6 Applications The next goal of our project is developing a NAT-PT gateway.

4 servers, http servers, pop3 servers, dns servers, and etc. Some other applications are still developing. Figure 2 shows these applications. Figure 2. IPv6 Applications The next goal of our project is developing a NAT-PT gateway. With dual-stack servers and tunnel mode v6 network, we can only provide services to a small part of Internet users. Most people are afraid that if they are using IPv6, they can t access the v4 resources. NAT-PT gateway is one of the best solutions. Our ultimate goal is to build up a native IPv6 network. Pure IPv6 routing becomes an important issue. Base on our knowledge, only BGP4+ and RIPng can work fine under v6 environment. More routing protocols, such as OSPF or MPLS are still needed to test. Wireless technology with IPv6 support is another important topic, especially the hybrid b, a, and Bluetooth environments. Wireless accesses should be the dominant technology for last-mile network b is more and more popular nowadays while a and Bluetooth are also arising. These rapid increasing of personal area network devices makes a huge demand of IP addresses. Using Ipv6 not only can support this IP demands but also solve the mobile handoff problems. This may be one of the killer applications for IPv6. 3. Conclusions The Internet today exists lots of problems. More IP address, more bandwidth, more security, and more quality of service guarantee are needed for end-to-end applications. Developing a suitable Internet Protocol for next generation Internet is imminent. IPv6 should be the one. Base on the Linux platform, we are trying to make a complete solution that includes all kinds of IPv6 servers, IPv6 clients, and NAT-PT gateways as well. The solution will deploy to all the colleges and universities in Taiwan in the near future. At the same time, IPv6 Steering Committee are trying to push vendors in Taiwan to link the IPv6 technology into their IA or mobile communication products. With a native IPv6 backbone constructed, and more and more IPv6 applications and products announced, we believe that IPv6 will soon be deployed in the next trend of Internet.

5 4. References [1]. [2]. [3]. [4]. [5]. [6].

IPv6 Summit in Japan Shian-Shyong Tseng, Ph.D. TWNIC. .net.tw.tw. NICI IPv6 Steering Committee

IPv6 Summit in Japan Shian-Shyong Tseng, Ph.D. TWNIC. .net.tw.tw. NICI IPv6 Steering Committee IPv6 Development in Taiwan IPv6 Summit in Japan 2002 Shian-Shyong Tseng, Ph.D. sstseng@twnic.net.net.tw.tw TWNIC NICI IPv6 Steering Committee CONTENTS Telecom and Internet Development in Taiwan (e-taiwan