A Comparison of OSPFv3 and EIGRPv6 in a Small IPv6 Enterprise Network

As the Internet slowly transitions towards IPv6, the routing protocols that are used to forward traffic across this global network must adapt to support this gradual transition. Two of the most frequently discussed interior dynamic routing protocols today are the IETF’s OSPF and Cisco’s EIGRP routing protocol. A wealth of papers have compared OSPF and EIGRP in terms of converge times and resource usage, however few papers have assessed the performance of each when implementing their respective security mechanisms. Therefore a comparison of OSPFv3 and EIGRPv6 will be conducted using dedicated Cisco hardware. This paper will firstly introduce each protocol and its security mechanisms, before conducting a comparison of OSPFv3 and EIGRPv6 using Cisco equipment. After discussing the simulation results, a conclusion will be drawn to reveal the findings of this paper and which protocol performs the best upon implementing their respective security mechanisms within a small IPv6 enterprise network.