International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887) Volume 78 – No.9, September 2013 6 Performance Observation of Distinct Routing Protocols under IPV6 Environment Shival Chadda Dept. of Computer Science Lord Krishna Polytechnic College, Kapurthala ABSTRACT In a mobile ad hoc network (MANET), the topology of the network may change rapidly and unexpectedly due to mobility of nodes. Routing protocols operate differently under distinct environments. Thus, it is necessary to analyze the behavior of different routing protocols under distinct environments. Thus, setting up routes that meet high reliability is a very challenging issue. Another important problem in the MANETs is the energy consumption of nodes. Our study is more concentrated on IPv6 than IPv4. The IPv6-enabled network architecture will become the future standard. IPv6 based network is more protected than IPv4 network and also IPv6 has huge address space support. In this Paper study has been done on the performance observation of various routing protocols of MANET under IPv6 Environment .OPNET Modeler 14.5 is used as simulation tool. We have analyzed the behavior of three routing protocols in the network protocol IPV4 & IPV6 and compared the performance of these protocols using OPNET Modeler 14.5.IPv6 Migration planner helps in migrating the nodes to IPv6 Environment. Routing protocols are estimated under IPv6 environment on the basis of Wireless LAN Load, wireless LAN Data dropped, Throughput, and Network load. The objective of this research is to examine how these routing protocols act under IPv6 environment and identify which routing protocol performs better. General Terms MANET Keywords Mobile Adhoc Networks,Routing Protocols, AODV, OLSR, GRP, Internet Protocol version 6. 1. INTRODUCTION A mobile ad hoc network lacks a fixed infrastructure and has a dynamically changing topology. The nodes move freely and independently of one another. Ad hoc networks are heavily used in emergency situations where no infrastructure is available, for e.g. battle fields, disaster mitigation etc. The main limitation of ad-hoc systems is the Availability of power. In addition to running the onboard electronics, power consumption is governed by the number of processes and overheads required to maintain connectivity [1]. MANET is a network consists of many nodes which communicate to each other without any central control authority. Bandwidth, energy, physical security and other resources are limited in mobile ad hoc network. In mobile ad hoc network every mobile node acts as a host and also as a router. 2. INTERNET PROTOCOL VERSION 6 With the rapid development in wireless communications in recent years, the necessity for sufficient Internet protocol (IP) addresses to meet the demand of mobile devices, as well as flexible communications without infrastructure, are especially considerable. The next-generation IP, Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) [1], [2], provides sufficient IP addresses to enable all kinds of devices to connect to the Internet and promotes mobile wireless commerce (m-commerce). The IPv6-enabled network architecture will become the future standard. Additionally, most current mobile devices are equipped with IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) interface cards. IEEE 802.11 WLAN supports two operating modes: infrastructure mode and ad hoc mode. The infrastructure mode requires all mobile devices to directly communicate to the access point (single-hop communication). In the ad hoc mode, mobile devices dynamically form a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) with multi-hop routing. Clearly, the ad hoc mode allows for a more flexible network, but its aim is not to connect to the Internet. In this paper, we address the issue of connecting MANETs to global IPv6 networks while supporting IPv6 mobility with various routing protocols. Much attention has been paid to IP address auto configuration and IPv6 extension for MANETs [3]–[5] in recent years. IPv6 auto configuration mechanism [3], [4] allows a node to generate a link-local IP address. Extension has also been made to be suitable for MANET [5]. However, global connectivity for a mobile node is not supported in [5]. Later on, [6] and [7] address how to provide global connectivity for an IPv6- enabled MANET. In these works, a MANET node can acquire a global IPv6 address from an Internet gateway, and then access to the Internet through the gateway. Routing in MANETs and the IPv6 network is based on existing protocol. Figure 1: A self-organizing, self-addressing, self-routing IPv6-based MANET. [14] 3. ROUTING PROTOCOLS IN MANET The routing protocols that are available for MANET comprise