Security issues involved with the transition of IPv4 to IPv6 - Research Paper Example

This helps them stay connected to their colleagues or bosses at work as on the other hand helping them solve minor home based problems by use of the internet resources. As a matter of fact, many people are adopting the work from home formula from the benefit of readily available internet supply. This kind of technological change makes the internet a reliable resource on a varied range of applications. Above all, the internet is now one of the main channels of communication. For instance, business people use it to transfer information on their transactions and governments use it for conducting administrative functions.

However, many governments are struggling to strengthen its security levels every new day. According to Hinden and Deering in the publication IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture 2006, it is true to state that the internet is a significant resource for the entire world. Below the application layer, where the above mentioned internet services are out in the open to the end user, the network comprises of a number of routers, servers and other network enabled devices which transfer information/data by use of standard set of protocols. . This leads to the security issues that link to the set standards of protocols in the networking systems.

Today the generation of Internet Protocol is the IPV4 which is in existence since the 80’s. It plays a role in the internet growth since then. This internet protocol can be effortlessly installed and is interoperable using 32 bit address space to contain approximately 4 billion unique addresses. However, as the internet is growing rapidly, the IPV4 is facing a lot of challenges which include forthcoming exhaustion of the IPV4 address space, security issues, configuration problems and other technical complications at the IP stage.

The IPV4 suffers Denial of Service (DOS) attacks which is an action to make the computer resource unavailable to its set users. This happens in flooding the target host with requests, consequently stopping authenticate network traffic to access the host. The IPV4 is a target for viruses and worms transfer as a result of the exhaustible address space of the IPV4. The IPV4 exposes confidential data of end users to attackers and hackers who can easily modify without their knowledge. The IPV4 faces fragmentation attacks where the victim host can crash, hang or reboot as a result of the fragmented ICMP packets that exceed the total allowable size for IP data address.

There are technological ways to control the above mentioned security issues in connection with IPV4. The transition of IPV4 to IPV6 is one of the ways that involves the end users, administrators and the network operators (Sotillo 5). However, this transition comes with its own security issues. This transition process is conducted to ensure modest disturbance occurs in executing hosts and routers