Performance Evaluation of Tunneling Mechanism in MIPv6 over IPv4

MIPv6 protocol is designed to support the mobility of the nodes and maintain ongoing connections while changing their locations. Currently, most of the internet infrastructures are using IPv4. MIPv6 as an extension of IPv6 is not compatible with IPv4; in this case, the transition mechanisms were used to tunnel MIPv6 traffic through IPv4 internet. This paper analyzes the performance of Manual Tunneling and 6to4 Tunneling in MIPv6 Networks, which communicate across IPv4 internet. Applications like FTP, HTTP, Database and Email using performance parameters such as Throughput, Response Time and End-to-End Delay were compared to find the best transition mechanism for MIPv6 Networks. Simulations results show that Manual Tunneling performed better with 12% than 6to4 Tunneling in Email, and HTTP applications with 13, 54%, whereas 6to4 Tunneling, outperforms Manual Tunneling in a Database application, while in FTP application, those two transition mechanisms have the same performance.