Measurement-based performance evaluation of\udnetwork traffic is becoming very important, especially for\udnetworks trying to provide differentiated levels of service quality to the different application flows. The non-identical response of flows to the different types of network-imposed performance degradation raises the need for ubiquitous measurement mechanisms, able to measure numerous performance properties, and being equally applicable to different applications and transports. This paper presents a new measurement mechanism, facilitated by the steady introduction of IPv6 in network nodes and hosts, which exploits native features of the protocol to provide support for performance measurements at the network (IP) layer. IPv6 Extension Headers have been used to carry the\udtriggers involving the measurement activity and the\udmeasurement data in-line with the payload data itself, providing a high level of probability that the behaviour of the real user traffic flows is observed. End-to-end one-way delay, jitter, loss, and throughput have been measured for applications operating on top of both reliable and unreliable transports, over different-capacity\udIPv6 network configurations. We conclude that this\udtechnique could form the basis for future Internet measurements that can be dynamically deployed where and when required in a multi-service IP environment.
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