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“A Guide for Federal Agencies Transitioning to IPv6” provides guidance for IPv6 transition“A Guide for Federal Agencies Transitioning to IPv6” is now available as the first report in a series of “IPv6 Best Practices World Report” from Juniper Networks, Inc., a provider of networking and security solutions. The report, the first of its kind, promises to provide a comprehensive set of best practices, program management models, workflow processes, and resources to guide federal agencies in their required IPv6 transition efforts.
The federal government issued a memorandum on August 2, 2005 from the Office of Management and Budget requiring all federal agencies to transition to IPv6. This transition is a complete technology transition that will impact every Information Technology based system within the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA). IPv6 will provide the necessary foundation to deliver advanced network centric services and solutions for a wide variety of applications and will provide the necessary infrastructure to support Everything over IP (EoIP), where all voice, video and data communication would occur over IP-based networks. Written by the IPv6 Summit, Inc., a subsidiary of Innofone.com in collaboration with Juniper Networks, the report includes recommended approaches, experiences and lessons learned and interviews with private and public sector organizations worldwide that are recognized leaders in IPv6. Government, civilian and defense agencies, research and development networks and private industry organizations have all contributed to the report.
The report suggests a centralized approach for avoiding problems caused by divergent transition approaches, interoperability issues and associated costs from transition failures. Some key recommendations include defining metrics to measure progress during transition as well as developing a business case that will provide the necessary quantitative and qualitative foundation for the transition.
Structured to meet the needs of the agency CIO, IPv6 transition lead and supporting transition staff, the report provides the following:
· Documents lessons learned by those who have made the transition.
· Produces input from IPv6 leaders in government and the private sector.
· Identifies success factors and recommends specific approaches.
· Combines all of this information into a format designed to support the planning efforts of federal CIOs and IPv6 transition officers.
Juniper Networks provides purpose-built high-performance IP platforms enabling customers to support different services and applications at scale. Juniper focuses on service providers, enterprises, governments and research and educations institutions around the world.
The federal government faces extreme challenges in the face of its current IP system and the transition to the IPv6. While advances had been made to the IPv4, the reality is that users have experienced erosion of ubiquity, loss of end-to-end connectivity and a substantial increase in completely.
During the 1990s, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an international body responsible for developing the majority of standards associated with the internet, discovered the problems with IPv4 and agreed upon IPv6 as the basis for the next generation. IPv6 not only addresses the limited address space within IPv4, it also provides Quality of Service (QoS), security, mobility, auto-configuration and extension headers.
Agency CIOs and transition officers stand to gain valuable knowledge from the experiences of those who have already made the transition or are otherwise experienced in IPv6. The size of the project and the time it will take to complete, possibly ten years, is overwhelming, and transition officers cannot afford timely and costly setbacks in the process. By relying on those who have gone before them, transition officers will improve their odds of a smooth transition.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
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