Fergie's Tech Blog

U.S. government IPv6 testing must go on

Grant Gross writes in InfoWorld:

Normally, August in the Washington, D.C., area is a time for many workers to take vacation and escape the near-tropical conditions. But the parking lot outside a Northern Virginia facility operated by the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) was filled Wednesday morning.

The work of DISA, with the job of creating, acquiring and testing technology equipment for the Defense Department, must continue through the sweltering August weather. In one of the DISA building's lab areas, more than a dozen Defense Department contractors were subjecting hardware products to a variety of tests.

Among the pressing matters in one of several testing labs at DISA was testing of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), the next generation of protocol that allows computers to communicate over the Internet. The Defense Department has set 2008 as a target for making its computer systems compatible with IPv6, although the agency had formerly mandated IPv6 compatibility by then. Even though the target is no longer a mandate, testing IPv6 remains an important priority.

posted by Fergie @ 8/20/2005 08:57:00 AM