The Obama administration has established deadlines for federal agencies to
adopt Internet Protocol Version 6.
IPv6 is an update of IPv4, and includes support for several times as
many addresses as IPv4—a fact that has prompted many to call for increased
IPv6 adoption.
Federal CIO Vivek Kundra wrote in a Sept. 28 memo
(PDF) that
all federal agencies will upgrade external facing servers and services to
"operationally use native IPv6" by the end of fiscal-year 2012. In
addition, agencies are required to upgrade internal client applications that
communicate with public Internet servers and supporting enterprise networks to
operationally use native IPv6 by the end of the 2014 fiscal year.
Agencies will also be required to designate an IPv6 transition manager and
submit that person's name, title and contact information to the Office of
Management and Budget by Oct. 30. The transition manager will be responsible
for leading the agency's IPv6 transition efforts. In addition, agency purchases
of networked technology must comply with FAR requirements for the use of the
USGv6 Profile and Test Program "for the completeness and quality of their
IPv6 capabilities."
Kundra's memo also said, "To facilitate the federal government's
adoption of IPv6, OMB will work with NIST to continue the evolution and
implementation of the USGv6 Profile and Testing Program. This program will
provide the technical basis for expressing requirements for IPv6 technologies
and will test commercial products' support of corresponding capabilities."
The OMB under the Bush administration mandated that all federal agencies be
capable of passing IPv6 packets on their backbone networks by June 30, 2008.
Kundra released the memo in connection with a Sept. 28 workshop on the
issue organized by the National Telecommunications and Information
Administration.
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