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June 30, 2008

Some time today, the U.S. federal government is expected to offer a long-awaited update on what it wants to do with is IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) proposal. However, government officials admit that meeting their much-heralded June 30 deadline for IPv6 compatibility is just the beginning of a never ending fight to get their networks ready for the "new" Internet.

While the deadline appears to be coming and going without any real drama, it's still a significant milestone in the anticipated rollout of the next-generation Internet. IPv6 has been available since 1998, but has yet to be widely deployed as of this date. It's still in its early stages of its infancy.

Under a White House policy issued three years ago, all federal agencies must demonstrate the ability to pass IPv6 packets across their backbone networks by June 30, 2008. Federal officials and IPv6 service providers are reporting little last-minute scrambling by agency CIOs or their network operations staff.

That's simply because the federal IPv6 requirements aren't too difficult to meet, according to industry experts who predict agencies will file the required IPv6 test results on time to the Office of Management and Budget.

Bill White, vice president of national sales for Sprint says "it's surprisingly quiet given all the focus and attention and money that the agencies have spent on the IPv6 initiative and planning for it."

Over the past two years, White has worked with six federal agencies to meet the mandate. He added "government agencies have done their testing and they have done the minimum to be in adherence with the OMB mandate."

Peter Tseronis, chair of the IPv6 working group of the Federal CIO Council said "so far, I have not heard of anybody who is not going to make the IPv6 deadline. Since December 2005, agencies have been reporting on their IPv6 progress through their Enterprise Architecture quarterly and annual reports. If someone doesn't make the deadline, it will be interesting to know why."

IPv4 address space is rapidly running out, and experts agree that the 27-year-old protocol will not support all the Internet-connected devices used by the world's 6.5 billion people in the future. IPv6 provides so many IP addresses -- 2 to the 128th power -- that it is expected to enable secure, mobile and embedded applications that are inconceivable today.

Although commercial deployment of IPv6 is a lot more advaced in Asia then anywhere else, where IPv4 addresses are scarce, the U.S. was the first country to require its federal networks to support IPv6 by a particular date.

The U.S. government's apparently successful effort to make its backbone networks IPv6 capable has prompted action among other countries worried about falling behind in next-generation Internet technology.

Overall, IPv6 is a major upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol that provides virtually unlimited addressing, built-in security and simplified network management. Created by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) ten years ago, IPv6 replaces IPv4, which supports 4.3 billion individually addressed devices on the Internet.

Last month, the European Commission held an IPv6 Day in Brussels to further discuss Europe's lagging IPv6 deployment. European Union countries have set a goal for 25 percent of commercial, government and residences to use IPv6 in two years from now.

Cody Christman, director of product engineering at NTT America said "what they were saying at this meeting is that Europe is behind the U.S. and Asia."

Since April 2003, NTT America has been offering IPv6 Internet access and counts the Federal Aviation Administration among its customers. Christman attended the May 30 IPv6 Day in Brussels. "This is a call to action for the EU to get on the stick, and get it quickly."

"We have absolutely no reason to believe that government agencies are not going to meet the deadline," Evans says. "Based on everything they have been reporting to us and how the process is supposed to work, there is no reason for the agencies not to be able to demonstrate compliance with IPv6."

Overall, ten cabinet-level agencies have submitted the required e-mail to OMB from their CIOs stating that they have successfully transmitted IPv6 packets. Others expect to receive similar e-mails from 14 other cabinet-level agencies in the next few days.

More important to the Bush Administration is the fact that the U.S. federal government met its IPv6 deadline without a huge influx of cash. When the federal IPv6 mandate was being considered, some IPv6 marketers said the U.S. federal government needed to spend upwards of $10 billion on IPv6 transition.

OMB proved them wrong. Instead, the U.S. government is migrating to IPv6 through its regular tech refresh budget with some minor additional spending in training and network engineering.

They've done the work. Now they just need to send in the notification to OMB to validate the work that's been done. So far, no federal agency has notified OMB of having failed to pass IPv6 packets successfully over the backbone network, and no federal agency has asked for an extension beyond June 30 either.

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Source: IT Direction.