In this blog post, I just want to introduce a new experiment with new term called SoDIP6. The world-wide network currently in operation is a Legacy IPv4 Network. We understand that legacy IPv4 network has several drawbacks as compared with next generation programmable IPv6 network. Legacy network is vertically integrated and complex in configuration with waste of addresses due to class-ful addressing mechanism. IPv6 is the one more secure, flexible, scalable and robust addressing protocol. Similarly, comparing with legacy network management, Software Defined Network is the horizontally distributed programmable and so flexible as well as controllable networking management approach currently in the central point of research for worldwide researchers. I just combined the two terminologies as SDN and IPv6 with a single name as Software Defined IPv6 or in short ‘SoDIP6’. SDN and the IPv6 are interrelated technologies where IPv6 operate on the network layer and SDN deals with the management of the networking operations as management layer. “The future networking infrastructure fully IPv6 operable and controlled/managed by the SDN controller is recognized as a SoDIP6 network”. The possibility of next generation energy efficient and smart networking could only be dreamed with the availability of programmable IPv6 network.
Mininet is the one best emulation tool used for testing of network operation and management. In this blog, I tried to experiment the dual stack SoDIP6 network with functioning of IPv4, IPv6 and the SDN.
I got very few (almost none) experiment incorporating IPv6 only network in the Mininet.