A dual-stack authentication mechanism through SNMP

The rapid development of IoT (Internet of Things) has further promoted the deployment and application of IPv6. The huge IP addresses requirements of the IoT sensors will also contribute to the popularity of IPv6. Therefore, the importance of IPv6 has become a trend. However, the design of IPv6 is incompatible with that of IPv4, which increases the difficulty in integration. In order to bridge the gap between these two heterogeneous protocols, the IETF has proposed numerous transitioning mechanisms to attain the compatibility of IPv4 and IPv6. The most common techniques are dual-stack, tunneling and translation. Before IPv6 completely takes over IPv4, these two heterogeneous protocols still need to coexist continually for a long period of time. However, we found that the existing captive portal authentication systems generally do not support IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack authentication, and furthermore lack of one-off dual-stack authentication solutions. Upgrading the authentication system has become an urgent problem to be addressed. This research presents a one-off authentication architecture for the coexisting IPv4 and IPv6 with the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) to gain user MAC address and IP address for identity authentication. It resolves the inconvenience that IPv4 and IPv6 need to be authenticated separately, and effectively improves the compatibility of the authentication system. Lastly, we successfully verify the feasibility and stability in a dormitory environment.