Managing the co-existing network of IPv6 and IPv4 under various transition mechanisms

Even though IPv6 has been developed for more than a decade, IPv4 is still the most commonly adopted network protocol. However, the significant changes in the new version may cause the transition procedure to continue for several years. Currently, three transition mechanisms, dual stack, tunneling, and translation, are proposed to solve the problems due to the co-existence of IPv6 and IPv4. In many occasions, there could be more than one transition mechanism between network connections. In order to effectively manage the co-existing environment with various transition mechanisms, this paper presents a practical approach to deal with the management of co-existing networks. In this approach, we firstly determine the underlying transitions by gathering and analyzing corresponding IPv6 addresses. Once transitions are discovered, appropriate management facilities are developed and applied accordingly.