The new network, which serves the 137,000-acre military base, was installed by General Dynamics, which said the four-year project cost $6 million. The piece of the network that provides non-secure Internet access -- dubbed NIPRNET in military terms -- runs on Brocade equipment.

BACKGROUND:

The Army required that Brocade's routers support IPv4, the current version of the Internet Protocol, as well as the . IPv6 features an expanded addressing scheme that can support vastly more devices connected directly to the Internet, but it is not backward compatible with IPv4.

"IPv6 is a driver," says Wes Medley, manager of systems engineering for Brocade's federal sales office. "We've been supporting network infrastructure upgrades since 2006 within the Army that have been fully compliant with IPv6 standards. ...What's unique about this base is that we've integrated IPv6, IPv4 and MPLS into the infrastructure, and we've provided Fort Carson with the capability to upgrade to 100 gigabit/second."

Ron Cibotti, Army section vice president at General Dynamics, says Brocade's gear was selected because it complied with military requirements for IPv6 and was lower priced than rival's gear.