Abstract—IPv4 address space will run out in the next two years. Therefore, it is necessary to deploy the new version of the Internet Protocol (IPv6) which dramatically expands the address space. One important issue for IPv6 to gain acceptance, is its end-to-end performance. For this reason, it is important to offer the Internet community some tools to compare IPv4 and IPv6 performance. In this paper, we present some models to evaluate the performance of IPv4 and IPv6. Our models can be used for any variant of Ethernet technologies (10 Mbps, 100 Mbps, or 1000 Mbps). We start by presenting a model for the one-way delay in IPv4 and IPv6. We also develop an upper bound model for IPv4 and IPv6 throughput. To validate our models, we do some experiments and compare the experimental values with the values given by the models. From this research, we can conclude that IPv4 has a better performance than IPv6 (higher throughput), but the differences are small.

Index Terms—IPv4, IPv6, Modeling, Benchmarks, Ethernet, Performance Evaluation, Throughput, One-Way Delay.

Eric Gamess is with the School of Computer Science, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Los Chaguaramos, Caracas 1040, Venezuela (phone: +58-212-6051296; e-mail: egamess@gmail.com).
Neudith Morales is with the DTIC (Dirección de Tecnología de Información y Comunicaciones), Universidad Central de Venezuela, Edificio El Rectorado, Los Chaguaramos, Caracas 1040, Venezuela (e-mail: neudith.morales@ucv.ve).

Cite: Eric Gamess and Neudith Morale, "Modeling IPv4 and IPv6 Performance in Ethernet Networks," International Journal of Computer and Electrical Engineering vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 282-288, 2011.