Improving the performance of IPv6 packet transmission over LAN

Abstract

IPv6 has extended features with a host of advantages when compared to IPv4 which could be capitalized to leverage on today's communication needs. Apart from its advantages, IPv6 header size has increased to twice the size of a typical IPv4 header resulting in increased overhead. IPv6 includes IPSec which adds further overhead and reduces network performance. The increased header size and IPSec in IPv6 would increase bandwidth utilization, increase latency and reduce throughput for IPv6 traffic. Devising appropriate methods to offset this increased overhead will significantly improve the performance of IPv6 packet transmission depending on the traffic being transferred. Based on our ongoing research, we present a customized IPv6 header for packet transmission over a LAN. The customized IPv6 header reduces the size of the IPv6 packet header. The reduction in header size will significantly improve the performance of small sized IPv6 packets that are dominantly present over a LAN in terms of bandwidth savings, better response time and increased throughput.