Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Government to Adopt IPv6 in 2008
IO ERROR writes "The U.S. Government is set to transition to IPv6 in June 2008, according to Government Computer News: 'In the newest additions to the IPv6 Transition Guidance, the CIO Council's Architecture and Infrastructure Committee has provided a list of best practices and transition elements that agencies should use as they work to meet the deadline. The latest additions, (MS Word) released in May, are a compilation of existing recommendations and best practices gathered from the Defense Department, which has been testing and preparing for the transition for years, the private sector, and the Internet research and development community.'"
"If the commercial world doesn't accept it then the goverment will be on it's own and that won't fly too well."
The government will never be on its own, there are too many corporations sucking at its teat who will need to step into line.
Note how this works in re: MA trying to force open standards for anyone it does business with.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I'm curious as to whether there are any reliable stats out there about the availability of IPv4 address space and how it has changed over time. The widespread adoption of hide-mode NAT has allowed companies, universities and the like to move thousands of computers out of the public address space, freeing up large blocks of public address goodness. Cripes when I think about what I got away with in university, hooking my desktop up to the local LAN, getting a public and ........
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
As the CIO Council and Office of Management and Budget help map out the June 2008 transition to IP Version 6, perhaps the biggest challenge is that they're entering unfamiliar territory.
In the newest additions to the IPv6 Transition Guidance, the council's Architecture and Infrastructure Committee has provided a list of best practices and transition elements that agencies should use as they work to meet the deadline.
So the government has a year-and-a-half to meet this deadline? Forgive the cynicism, but given that they have a loose set of guidelines and so many systems that would need conversion, I think they're being a tad optimistic. Kudos for trying this, but I won't be surprised when it takes until 2010.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
The government will never be on its own, there are too many corporations sucking at its teat who will need to step into line.
Good point, that worked really well with GOSIP which is why we're all using OSI now.
What, we're not? Hmm.
This is a big step forward for IPv6 adoption, but I think the next major step will be by the cable companies. They want every set-top-box or cable TV to have two way communication and be fully addressable. Where else would they get the address space needed for that? IPv6 solves a lot of the problems they have with addressing that may devices. That will probably be the first way IPv6 gets into most of our homes.
Digitac
The government will never be on its own, there are too many corporations sucking at its teat who will need to step into line.
Agreed. Who writes this stuff? ISPs already have management networks running IPv6 and big players like Comcast ran out of unique IPv4, for their cable modem pools and have completed their migration to IPv6. China is on the boat and most network gear deals with both just fine. How exactly is the US government going to be on its own here?
I am not amazingly versed in this issue but several things stand out immediately to anyone who has a little networking experience.
I'm sure someone with a little more knowledge, and/or a little more imagination, can come up with others.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Believe that! When the Goverment (read Military) goes IPv6, half the corporate US is going too.
The good news: long term, I think IPv6 is desirable. Thus, I like seeing a large organization pave the way. Let them get the kinks out. Let them find out what all goes wrong. Let them blaze the trail so we can ride on their coattails. Let them incur the big expense.
The bad news: Wait a minute. "Them?" Oh shit, it's the US government. I'm a US citizen. Argh, that's my expense. D'oh!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
there was actually a perfectly good answer to this proposed by deering.
geographic addressing. it was unnecessarily denounced as anti-provider
and socialist.
Interest in IpV6 has stagnated since 2001.
y =ipv6_meme_flatlined_for_five
If the U.S. Government is about to push a major IpV6 initiative, there could be some money to be made here.
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entr
Of course this is all theoretical because large chunks of the address space are "wasted" - no, scratch that, read "used" - to prevent fragmentation, i.e. end users always get a /48 network. The smallest subnet is /64 etc.
/29 net or a /24. Two /29 users could be adjacent and have their first 3 octets of the address match. This complicates routing, because this simple example already doubles the routing table at the upstream router.
/104 networks in IPv6 and still have plenty of addresses. But it's specifically not done for the above reasons.
With IPv4 there are users who could have a
With IPv6 you take the first 48 bits and those always point to a unique end user. Any smaller subnet is going to be handled by this user's router, so routing tables just became a lot smaller, even if the addresses are four times as large.
This "anti-fragmentation" of course consumes chunks of address space without using every one of those addresses. Of course users could do with, for example,
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
See this mailing list message, which points to this PDF presentation.