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.'"

Comments

Re:Deployed!?!

[Red Flayer]

"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.

Re:What are the Downsides to IPv6? Anyone?

[drinkypoo]

I am not amazingly versed in this issue but several things stand out immediately to anyone who has a little networking experience.

1. Lots of legacy equipment does not and will never support IPv6. That means...
2. We will have a whole bunch of IPv4 to IPv6 gateways. This will be absolutely necessary. We have them now, of course, but not so many of them. You think NAT is a PITA when you have IPv4 on both sides of the wall? Try it with different protocols. You're going to have fun!
3. IPv6 addresses are four times the size of IPv4 addresses. That means additional computation is necessary to handle the simplest IP tasks (routing.) Doing the comparison to find out if a packet is yours on a 32 bit system can take as many as four comparisons, whereas with IPv4 it was only one.
4. IPv4 software is mature, IPv6 software is comparatively untested. GUIs need to be developed for configuration, and all the software has to be developed. A lot of software has IPv6 support, but hasn't really been hammered on in that way, simply because practically no one is using IPv6. There will be significant fallout.
5. IPv6 may be simpler, but retraining will still be necessary. Lots of people have spent literally decades getting used to TCP/IP, learning all its ins and outs, and figuring out how to make it do the right thing. IPv6 is allegedly more intelligently designed, but there will still be gotchas.

I'm sure someone with a little more knowledge, and/or a little more imagination, can come up with others.