An upper bound model for TCP and UDP throughput in IPv4 and IPv6

Due to the shortage of public IPv4 addresses, the IETF has developed a new version of the Internet Protocol called IPv6. Many institutions all over the world had already started the migration to IPv6. Since this migration has to be done slowly, the first step is the coexistence of the two protocols (IPv4 and IPv6) for some years. One important issue for IPv6 to gain acceptance, is its performance in end-user applications. Hence, due to the availability of a variety of IPv6 implementations on different operating systems, it is important to evaluate the performance of the different IPv6 stacks, and compare it to the one shown by IPv4. In this paper, we present an upper bound model to compute TCP and UDP throughput for IPv4 and IPv6, in a full-duplex point-to-point connection. Our model can be used for any variant of Ethernet technology (10, 100, and 1000 Mbps). To validate this model, we did experiments and compared the maximum theoretical throughput with the experimental ones. Experiments were done with Windows XP SP2, Solaris 10, and Debian 3.1, which are very popular operating systems. The results show that 10 Mbps Ethernet technology is already very mature, since it gave performance very close to the maximum theoretical throughput. Experiments with FastEthernet (100 Mbps) show a TCP and UDP throughput close to the maximum theoretical throughput, especially for large payload. In the case of GigaEthernet (1000 Mbps), experimental results are not far from the maximum throughput for large TCP and UDP payload. However, for small TCP and UDP payload, the differences between our model (the maximum throughput) and the experiments are important. These differences should significantly decrease with the release of faster technology (processors and RAM).