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GCN Home > 12/11/06 issue

Agencies coming to terms with IPv6

Officials learning to love—or at least appreciate—new Internet protocol

By William Jackson, GCN Staff

The transition of government networks to the next-generation Internet Protocol has gained traction over the last year, according to a recent survey of government and industry officials.

Almost half of the respondents from civilian agencies and nearly two-thirds of those in the Defense Department said that IPv6 is important in supporting their IT goals. Money for the transition is slowly moving into the funding pipeline. Federal spending on IPv6-enabled products and services is expected to hit $27 billion this year, climbing to $60 billion by 2011.

“A year ago, we were looking at a community that had no understanding of the value of IPv6 and had no plans in place,” said Charles L. Lynch, senior partner with SynExi LLC of Clifton, Va., who headed DOD’s IPv6 transition office until early 2006.

This year, 25 percent of civilian offices have a written plan for moving to IPv6, as do 34 percent of DOD offices.

The survey of 1,076 federal, state, local and industry workers was conducted by SynExi and Juniper Networks Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif. It follows a survey conducted last year by Juniper in the wake of the 2005 mandate from the Office of Management and Budget for civilian agencies to move to IPv6.

Ambitious objective

OMB set an ambitious but limited initial objective of enabling core networks for IPv6 by June 2008, a move that DOD had begun two years earlier. The focus in the first year of the project has been upgrading equipment through routine technology refreshes, without additional funding.

“This is a clear indication of the success of what OMB has done so far,” SynExi senior partner Dale Geesey said of the most recent survey results.

As would be expected, DOD leads the civilian agencies in planning, training and budgeting—though civilian agencies are gaining ground.

Surprisingly, state and local governments also are beginning the shift to IPv6, with 46 percent of state and local respondents reporting that they have begun planning and requested budget for the move.

They estimated that 36 percent of their current IT infrastructure is IPv6-capable—a percentage slightly above civilian federal agencies—and consider that figure likely to reach 48 percent within two years.

More news on related topics: Defense IT, IPv6, IT Management, Web Strategies



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