IPv6 in Linux
Nov 05, 2008, 00:04 (2 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Rami Rosen)
Re-Imagining Linux Platforms to Meet the Needs of Cloud Service Providers
"Usually in IPv4, mobile devices are behind NAT. By eliminating
NAT when using mobile devices in IPv6, we avoid the traffic of
sending KEEP ALIVE messages, which are sent in order to keep the
NAT state active. These messages are quite frequent. They are sent
periodically every 40-120 seconds. NAT elimination for mobile
devices in IPv6 reduces power consumption of these mobile devices,
and as a consequence significantly improves their standby time.
Sometimes, with mobile devices, each application may send its own
keep alive messages, which only makes the problem worse.
"But its extended address space is not the only advantage of
IPv6, as some might think. Based on the experience gained with
IPv4, many changes were made in IPv6 to improve the IP protocol. We
will try to explain and focus in this article on these changes and
their implementation in Linux, and we will show what is better in
IPv6 in comparison to IPv4. The next sections will describe the
format of IPv6 addresses, and how IPv6 is implemented in Linux, in
user space, and in the kernel."