Utilising IPv6 over VPN to enhance home service connectivity

The number of home networks, as well as the number of services and hosts in them, is increasing. Often home users cannot get public IPv4 network allocations from service providers and are forced to use network address translation (NAT) and port forwarding to solve connectivity issues to the different home services. This paper seeks to introduce a secure connectivity solution utilising both IPv6 and IPv6 transition mechanisms in cooperation with existing virtual private network (VPN) solutions.

The proposed solution to avoid route conflicts and other problems with private IPv4 address space collisions is to utilise 6to4, an IPv6 transition mechanism, to obtain routable IPv6 network addresses first for the home network and services and then, to utilise the same IPv6 network for connectivity by bridging it over a VPN connection to the mobile terminal.

The paper finds that the adoption of this solution and these technologies will depend on how useful they are seen by vendors or service providers and included in their products. Regular vendors and service providers probably want to wait until there is a greater customer need. On the other hand, customers do not know about the possibilities before they are shown to them in practice. The best approach to this challenge is to find a cooperating vendor, or even better, a service provider willing to develop the concept further and to integrate it into the devices and services they are already offering.

The technologies for enhancing home service connectivity are already available. In the proof‐of‐concept implementation the paper has shown that all these components can be integrated and utilised to build home routers for present and future home networks. The technical disadvantages and challenges are solvable with further work and the whole concept is ready to be turned into products and services. As indicated in the paper, one of the issues for further work is to find and convince a vendor or service provider to integrate the proposed solution in their home router.