Statistical behavioral characteristics of network communication delay in IPv4/IPv6 Internet

Studies on the delay characteristics under the Internet macro-topology provides a reference for resolving the real-time performance issue of the data transmission of Internet devices. With the overall advancement of IPv6 Internet deployment, the changes in network structure and paths will generate different degrees of delay. In this context, a comparative analysis of the behavioral characteristics of IPv4 and IPv6 network delay was performed in this study. We selected the sampled data of valid paths located at four monitors on different continents under the CAIDA_Ark project to obtain statistics for the network delay and communication diameter on the IPv4 and IPv6 Internet and found that their correlation was extremely weak. Furthermore, the communication diameter on IPv6 Internet was slightly shorter than that on IPv4 Internet. The network delay exhibited a bimodal or multimodal heavy-tailed distribution. The network delay and maximum link delay for IPv4 and IPv6 Internet were strongly correlated, indicating that the bottleneck delay affects the relationship between the network delay and communication diameter. Next, we analyzed the relationship between network delay and bottleneck delay for IPv4 and IPv6 Internet and found that bottleneck delay has a more significant impact on the network delay on the valid paths for IPv4 Internet than for IPv6 Internet. After mapping the IP addresses at both ends of the bottleneck delay to the Autonomous Systems (ASes), we found that the bottleneck delay on the valid paths for the IPv4 Internet was mostly distributed in the intra-AS, whereas it was in the inter-AS for the IPv6 Internet. Finally, we analyzed the factors affecting bottleneck delay and found that propagation delay in the long-distance range is an important factor (L > 4000 km on IPv4 Internet and L > 7000 km on IPv6 Internet). In addition, for IPv4 Internet, queuing delay is an important factor affecting bottleneck delay, whereas in the process of data communication on the IPv6 Internet, the impact of propagation and queuing delays on the bottleneck delay is weakened.