Dept. of Defense IPv6 Interoperabilty Test Begins

securitas writes "The Department of Defense has launched Phase I of its delayed IPv6 interoperability test (mirror) in a six-month project dubbed Moonv6. It is the largest North American IPv6 test ever and its goal is to evaluate IPv6 for 'network-centric military operations.' Phase II was originally scheduled to begin in January 2004 but may be delayed due to the late start of the current test. 'IPv4 addresses are 32 bits long, enough for around 4 billion unique addresses.' In contrast, the IPv6 address length is '128 bits, or 340 billion billion billion billion unique addresses.' Experts hope this will solve a predicted IP address shortage as more devices are created to use the Internet."

Comments

Re:NAT is the answer

[Cokelee]

Um, NAT blows. People that use NAT are using a broken routing spec. NAT is NOT an acceptable solution.

It's hard to believe

[Pan T. Hose]

I hope the DOD isn't building a network larger than this, why the heck would they waste the money on millions of machines that would be needed to be larger than the 6bone was.

It's hard to believe and I'm sure I certainly wouldn't have believed it myself if it wasn't my good friend who told me about it, but besides the technical issues some people actually didn't like the name of 6bone, because it sounds to much like sex-boner (sic) and therefore cannot be taken seriously by people who make financial decisions. It may be hard to believe but here in the gov and mil it is sometimes better to waste more money, since it's not your money in the first place. Cheaper solutions often mean less profit and that is exactly why you don't ever want your project to be associated with hobby/nonprofit org. It's also good thing to mention "terrorists" to get more money these days. I really hope this situation is going to change soon.