Performance evaluation between IPv4 and IPv6 on MPLS Linux platform

This paper presents the performance evaluation between IPv4 and IPv6 with Linux MPLS tunnel. MPLS Linux tunneling is used to transport IPv6 data stream over IPv4 network for interoperable IPv4 and IPv6 deployment. The performance metrics such as jitter, datagram/packet loss and bandwidth were measured in both TCP and UPD traffic flow. The experiment test-bed was constructed using virtual machine tool for simulating the IPv4, IPv6, and the MPLS tunneling mechanism. This study revealed that IPv6 offered better performance than IPv4 in almost all of the testing except in TCP transfer. In addition, MPLS tunnel improved performance in packet transfer for TCP transfer, UDP transfer and bandwidth testing.