The Obama administration that requires agencies to support IPv6 on their public-facing Web services by the end of this federal fiscal year. There is a second step to the Obama administration mandate that requires agencies to support IPv6 on their internal, operational networks by Sept. 30, 2014. It's unclear what the consequences of not meeting the mandates will be.

BACKGROUND:

Experts say federal IPv6 deployment has lagged due to a lack of support for the emerging standard by government contractors, including carriers and content delivery networks as well as their network equipment suppliers.

"Agencies are supposed to have the general Internet-based services that are available to citizens support IPv6," said Dale Geesey, COO at government contractor Auspex Technologies, at last week's North American IPv6 Summit in Denver. "It's a big challenge from a federal perspective."

Geesey said the Federal CIO Council has an IPv6 task force that meets weekly and that agency IPv6 transition managers are meeting monthly to help the government hit this aggressive goal. "We continue to move forward," he said.