15 6NET

In 2002 CESNET became a partner in the 6NET project (IST-2001-32603), which is a part of the EU 5th Framework Programme. Our contribution is mainly hardware and software development of an IPv6 PC-based router (see Chapter) within the work group 3 (Basic Network Services).

Apart from testing and evaluation of technologies, this work group also has ambitions and already a few interesting results in the area of IPv6 multicast. It is well-known that IPv6 multicast can so far only work within a single administrative domain, where all routers can learn the address of the rendezvous points (RP). IPv4 uses MSDP (Multicast Source Discovery Protocol), which is not likely - and for good reasons! - to be standardised for IPv6 at all. A partial solution for inter-domain IPv6 multicast can be SSM (Source-specific Multicast). However, it is not suitable for all types of multicast sessions and also requires that routers and switches of last-hop networks support the protocols IGMPv3 (for IPv4) and MLDv2 (for IPv6). The WP3 group thus took the advantage of the redundancy in the IPv6 addresses and designed a mechanism that encodes the RP address directly in the IPv6 address of the respective multicast group. This mechanism is known as embedded RP and has already been submitted to IETF for standardisation.

Active development of protocols and mechanisms is often hampered by the inflexibility and closed character of commercial routers. CESNET in cooperation with the Norwegian NREN UNINETT (and with support of other members of the 6NET consortium) thus prepared a new activity for the year 2004, whose primary aim will be a high-performance open source platform for IPv6 multicast protocol development. This platform will be based on the COMBO6 card and a selected PIM-SM daemon.

CESNET also participates, although with considerable less capacity, in other 6NET work packages:

WP 1 - Build and operate the IPv6 network
WP 2 - IPv4-IPv6 coexistence, interworking and migration
WP 7 - Dissemination and exploitation of results (here we contributed a CVS server)

A very distinguishing feature of the experimental 6NET network is the absence of IPv4. In February 2003 we connected our national IPv6 backbone natively to 6NET through an STM-1 circuit. The current 6NET topology is shown in Figure.

Figure 15.1: 6NET topology

A more detailed information about the 6NET project is available from its home page.

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