DOD to allocate its IPv6 addresses

Only a tiny percentage of those addresses will be used, however. As with the North American Numbering Plan for telephone numbers, DOD officials said addresses will be assigned to networks in a hierarchical model that will leave many untouched.

The huge address block also will help DOD’s network performance and scalability, said Kris Strance, lead manager for DOD’s transition to IPv6.

“An IPv6 address plan also provides more addresses than are immediately needed and holds additional addresses in reserve to allow for growth without force reallocation or additional noncontiguous allocations,” Strance said.

Strance added that the plan likely will use as little as 1 percent of the addresses allotted to DOD.

For this collection of addresses, which in IP talk is known as a /16 (pronounced “slash 16’), DOD will pay a paltry $36,000 a year, and will start assigning them to the military services and agencies over the next two months, Strance said.

“We will be analyzing the requirements from the services and agencies to get the initial block of addresses,” Strance said. “We will work with them to allocate the addresses based on their specific requirements.”

A /16 block is what was referred to as a Class B network under IPv4. The IPv6 address space has room for up to about 3.5 million /16 networks with no more than about 14 million hosts per network.

DOD is not the first agency to receive its IPv6 addresses from the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) of Chantilly, Va.

“When an existing customer has an IPv4 agreement, all they have to do is request v6 addresses and pay for the service,” said Stephen Ryan, ARIN’s general counsel and an attorney with the Washington law firm of McDermott, Will and Emery. “There is no need for a new agreement.”

ARIN has existing agreements to provide IPv4 addresses with a number of other agencies, including the Commerce Department, Ryan said.

He added that ARIN recently signed an agreement with the State Department.

ARIN’s rates for IPv6 addresses are based on the size of the block. Its Web site lists costs for a micro allocation, known as /41 or /48 address blocks, at about $1,250 a year, up to what DOD is paying—$36,000 annually—for a /21 or greater allocation, such as DOD’s /16.

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