master-thesis/doc/Abstract.tex

\clearpage
\null
\vfil % or it might be \null
\thispagestyle{plain}


\begin{center}\textbf{Abstract}\end{center}
Due to the lack of IPv4 addresses, IPv6 deployements have recently
gained in importance in the Internet.
Several transition mechanism exist that allow translating IPv6
packets into IPv4 packets, thus enabling the coexistence
and interoperability of both protocols.

This thesis describes an implementation of the transition mechanism
NAT64 implemented in P4. Using the P4 programming language
a software emulated switch was created that translates IPv4 to IPv6 and vice versa.
Due to the target independence of P4 the same code can be compiled
for and deployed to on the FPGA hardware platform ``NetFPGA''.

Within the NetFPGA the NAT64 implementation achieves a stable throughput of
9.29 Gigabit/s and allows in network translations without a
router. Due to the nature of P4, the implementation runs at line speed
and thus with different hardware the same code can run potentially at
much higher speeds, for instance on 100 Gbit/s switches.

%% P4. P4 is protocol and target independent and allo
%% P4 is a protocol independent programming language that allows programming network
%% However even IPv6 only network
%% deployments usually need connectivity towards the legacy IP (IPv4)
%% networks. To allow legacy IP and IPv6 devices to communicate with each
%% other a transition mechanism named ``NAT64'' is usually
%% deployed. However NAT64 solutions in software often don't reach line
%% rate. Programmable switches offer a possibility to implement NAT64 in
%% the network. This master thesis shows the design, feasibility and
%% scalability of NAT64 on programmable switches.
\vfil
\clearpage