IPv6 is an upgrade to the existing IPv4 internet technology and promises to allow vastly more IP addresses to be used on the internet. Each public facing computer, server or computer device on the Internet needs to have a unique number assigned to it when it logs on. This is known as the IP (Internet Protocol) address. Without it a computer would not be able to communicate with other computers on the internet.

U.S. federal government officials are under pressure to meet a June 30 deadline but they commented that they are confident they will meet it in time to support IPv6 on their backbone networks.

The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) saw the need for this upgrade back in 1995 and invented the IPv6 specification to combat the very real risk of running out of IP addresses due to the popular uptake of the Internet.

In 2005 the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) gave a requirement that all U.S. federal agencies must be capable of passing IPv6 packets on their backbone networks by June 30, 2008.

Working under similar deadline to migrate to IPv6 is the Department of Defense, who have been under-going a five-year transition to IPv6 since 2003. By September 2008, the department has promised to have all of its core networks able to process IPv6 traffic.

“We will meet the OMB mandate,” says Kris Strance, who is the leader of IPv6 transition for the Defense Department and works in the Office of the Secretary of Defense CIO. “The OMB mandate only requires that you pass IPv6 packets across the network. It does not require the infrastructure, for example the DNS servers, the security devices and such, to be IPv6 capable.”

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