How efficient is Efficient NDP?

Sammanfattning: In the following years we will experience a transition towards Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). The reason is the depletion of IPv4 address space due to the rapid increasing numbers of Internet of Things (IoT) devices connection. This transition however poses a problem, since the majority of these devices mostly are mobile and not connected to power source. Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) defined in RFC 4861 is used in IPv6 networks, to manage the address configuration as well as the network prefix and maintain lists of all the neighbors connected to that network. However, this protocol does not work as good in wireless connected devices as in wired. The messages exchange in the network disrupts the sleep mode of the nodes resulting in lower battery time. Hence the energy efficiency of these devices is now something we should consider. To solve this problem, the Efficient NDP draft was introduced as one of the optimized methods. This thesis takes the previous theses of analysis and simulations of IPv6 Neighbor Discovery for wireless networks further, to explore the ND protocol in RFC 4861 (legacy NDP), and compare it to the Efficient NDP draft in terms of energy efficiency for the devices mentioned above. Several dynamic network cases are taken into analysis, and simulation scenarios for these cases are tested in OMNeT++. These simulation models follow the implementation process introduced in the protocols with consideration of network scalability, and present the result that the Efficient NDP has large improvement in saving multicast messages in ND process.