PET: Prefixing, Encapsulation and Translation for IPv4-IPv6 Coexistence

IPv6 transition problem has become one of the key factors which are holding up the development of the next generation Internet. Aiming to solve IPv6 transition problem, several translation and tunneling techniques have been proposed, satisfying the demand of IPv4-IPv6 interconnection and traversing respectively. However, translation techniques can´t convert the semantic between IPv4 and IPv6 protocol perfectly, and they have serious limitations in operation complexity and scalability. Researchers tried to decompose, simplify these problems and improve translation techniques accordingly, but they´ve come to little achievement since these problems result from the very nature of translation. We propose a novel approach of choosing appropriate translation spot to solve these problems in a different angle, and hence make effective use of translation technique. Then we propose a framework for IPv4-IPv6 coexistence called PET, which integrates tunneling and translation to support both traversing and IPv4-IPv6 interconnection, and uses them properly to constitute communication models in different scenarios. Moreover, we put forward PET signaling method to achieve automatic translation spot election and translation context advertisement, as a complement to the framework.