By Odeh John, Owoicho
Internet Protocol version 6 ( IPv6 ) is a new version of internetworking protocol designed to remove all the shortcomings of the standard current Internet protocol IPv4.Moving to the next-generation of Internet protocol became an issue to solve a number of problems in the next-generation. With the exhaustion of the IPv4 addressing space quickly approaching, it became a high priority for service providers, enterprises, IP appliances manufacturers, application developers, and most importantly, Universities in Nigeria to begin their own deployments of IPv6. Therefore several mechanisms are required which ensures smooth, stepwise and independent change to IPV6 in the existing Universities’ networks. The solutions (or mechanisms) can be divided into two categories: dual stack and tunneling. Dual-stack is a preferred, most versatile way to deploy IPv6 in existing IPv4 environments. IPv6 can be enabled wherever IPv4 is enabled along with the associated features required to make IPv6 routable, highly available, and secure. In this project the Dual-Stack transition mechanism is implemented using the GNS3 (Graphical Network Simulator) software, CISCO ios routers, Microsoft Visio 2013 to show the System Architecture and Design Methodology. The network topology combines both, Dual - Stack and tunneling technologies, which can be observed by capturing the IPv6 addresses and packets in the router interfaces. The assigned IPv6 addresses to major Nigerian Universities is done using the GNS3 software. Blocks of IPv6 addresses are up and running with each router connected using the 10Gb link