IPv6 Transition Test: Overview

With the supply of new IPv4 addresses exhausted, the change over to IPv6 is finally imminent. Given the extent to which IPv4 addresses are embedded in networks and applications, IPv4 and IPv6 addresses will co-exist for decades. Upgraded network architectures need to support IPv4 and IPv6 technologies, the associated transition/translation mechanisms, and scale to accommodate a significant increase in clients and services. Supporting IPv6 can be a tremendous stress on network systems by potentially introducing latency, degrading network responsiveness and availability, and impacting a provider's ability to meet service level agreements (SLAs).

Is your network truly ready for IPv6?

Testing IPv6 requires emulating the full range of protocols used in today's IPv4, IPv6, and transitional dual-stack networks, as well as fully stressing the data plane and associated tunneling/translation implementations of each device.

Ixia: The most comprehensive test solution for testing IPv6 readiness - from wireless and broadband access through the Internet core

Ixia's IPv6 Transition Readiness Kit equips NEMs and service providers with test plans and tools to fully evaluate the IPv6 readiness of each device, system, or end-to-end network. Testing answers critical questions such as:

• Can my system correctly assign and scale IPv4 and IPv6 addresses for Internet access?
• Is my system capable of ensuring QoS for both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic for increasing subscribers and load?
• Are my tunneling and translation implementations robust?
• What is my NAT table capacity and forwarding performance?
• How is application responsiveness and performance impacted when transition or translation mechanisms are pushed to their limits?
• Is my dual-stack core network capable of supporting the increased load of mixed IPv4/IPv6 routing?

Ixia's IxNetwork™ and IxN2X™ products support the most comprehensive portfolio of IPv6 protocol emulations and features. The routing and switching and broadband access solution tests all system aspects in an end-to-end access or core network, individually or collectively, including:

• BRAS
• DSLAM
• LAC
• LNS
• Relay Agent
• DHCPv4/v6 server
• 6rd Border Relay
• Carrier-grade NAT device
• Aggregation switch
• Dual-stack router

Ixia's solution stresses the system under test (SUT) by emulating clients, network devices, and servers that generate bi-directional IPv4/v6 control and data plane traffic, as illustrated below.

Key product features:

• Wire-rate IPv4 and IPv6 traffic generation and measurements (throughput, data integrity, latency, jitter) over the same test port
• Realistic, stateful multi-service application traffic and QoE measurements
• Flexible packet encapsulation/decapsulation for testing GRE, MPLS, 6to4, 6over4, and 4over6
• Integration between control plane and traffic generation to target traffic to IPv4 and IPv6 end points
• Dual-stack routing protocol emulation (BGP, OSPF, ISIS, RIP, and PIM)
• Dual-stack PPP with DHCPv6-PD and NDP emulation
• Dual-stack PPP over L2TP LAC and LNS emulation
• DHCPv6 clients, relay agents, and server emulation
• DS-Lite home gateway (B4 element) and home device emulation
• 6rd customer edge device and host (home device) emulation
• Multicast host and IPTV client emulation (IGMP/MLD)

Ixia's unified hardware platform supports all the above protocols and has the industry's highest port-density. The platform allows cost-effective, high-scale testing of all IPv6 implementation aspects - accelerating time-to-market and successful deployments.