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North America’s Largest IPv6 Network Pilot Deployed

Durham, N.H. – October 20, 2003 – The North American IPv6 Task Force (NAv6TF), dedicated to the advancement and propagation of IPv6, today announced that North America’s largest IPv6 pilot network, Moonv6, has been deployed to provide the North American market with strong validation for IPv6 through testing and demonstrating the technology’s effectiveness under real-world conditions.

The Moonv6 project (http://www.moonv6.org) is a collaborative effort between the North American IPv6 Task Force (NAv6TF), the University of New Hampshire’s InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), Internet2 (I2), and the Joint Interoperability Testing Command (JITC) along with other Department of Defense (DoD) agencies, including the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines. Taking place across the U.S. at multiple locations for the next six months, the Moonv6 project represents the most aggressive collaborative IPv6 interoperability and application demonstration event in the North American market to date.

The IPv6 network, based at UNH, involves more than 30 organizations and reaches from Durham, N.H. to San Diego, Calif. The UNH-IOL has completed the Moonv6 project’s initial interoperability and test period, which ran Oct. 7 – Oct. 17. Moonv6 will continue to operate past this initial phase as a U.S.-wide proving ground for use by industry, universities, research labs, Internet providers, application providers, the DoD and other government agencies, and as a tool to assist in the evolution of IPv6 for early adoption and deployment within the North American geography. The NAv6TF mission is to keep Moonv6 up and running permanently as the North American IPv6 backbone.

“Moonv6 was a critical milestone and success for the North American IPv6 Task Force in our effort to demonstrate that IPv6 supports a robust core networking infrastructure that can be used to now begin IPv6 network infrastructure deployment,” stated Jim Bound, chair of the NAv6TF, chair of the IPv6 Forum Technical Directorate and HP fellow.

“Moonv6 will prove to be a wealth of information and practical experience for all involved,” said Yurie Rich, NAv6TF business director and Native6 president. “One of the NAv6TF’s primary objectives is to increase the level of understanding and technical expertise of the next generation Internet protocol for our North American constituents. I can’t imagine a more productive way to accomplish that than Moonv6.”

The NAv6TF, under the auspices of the IPv6 Forum, the U.S. Cybersecurity Office and the Department of Defense defined the idea for Moonv6 during a meeting to discuss IPv6 technology deployment benefits, as part of the NAv6TF's effort to provide input to the Cybersecurity request for public comment. The DoD goal is to complete the transition to IPv6 for all inter and intra networking across the DoD by FY 2008.

“The IPv6 community and stakeholders applaud the U.S. Department of Defense for leadership in IPv6 and for taking the Internet where it should go,” said Latif Ladid, president of the IPv6 Forum, chair of the European Union IPv6 Task Force and Internet Society trustee. “This massive call to action is unprecedented in the history of the Internet as IPv6 will restore the fundamental end to end model of the Internet, the prime enabling technology piece for growth and innovation for everyone and everything to be on the Net where it makes sense.”

NAv6TF and Moonv6
The NAv6TF has been an IPv6 conduit for all entities across the North American geography for Moonv6 and IPv6. The NAv6TF provided many invaluable resources to the Moonv6 project, including:

“NAv6TF is an all-volunteer work force with a non-vendor view and driven solely by the motive to deploy IPv6,” said Ben Schultz, managing engineer at UNH-IOL. “This affords the NAv6TF great respect from industry and government to be a trusted partner to help define and develop the deployment strategy for IPv6 in an enterprise.”

Ben Schultz, managing engineer at the UNH-IOL, and Major Roswell Dixon, Tactical Data Systems/IPv6 Action Officer, GIG Tactical Networks Branch, Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC), will give a presentation entitled “Moonv6 Results,” on December 9, 2003 at the U.S. IPv6 Summit 2003 in Arlington, VA at the Doubletree Crystal City. The U.S. IPv6 Summit 2003 is hosted by the North American IPv6 Task Force and the IPv6 Forum and organized by Charmed Technology, Inc. For more information, visit http://www.usipv6.com

Moonv6 Participants
The full list of participating communications service providers, equipment vendors and test equipment companies is as follows:

About Moonv6
The Moonv6 project is a collaborative effort between the NAv6TF, the UNH-IOL, the JITC and various other DoD agencies and I2. Taking place across the U.S. at multiple locations, the Moonv6 project represents the most aggressive collaborative IPv6 interoperability and application demonstration event in the North American market to date. For more information, visit the Moonv6 Web site at http://www.moonv6.org.

About the North American IPv6 Task Force
The North American IPv6 Task Force (NAv6TF) is a sub-chapter of the IPv6 Forum dedicated to the advancement and propagation of IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) in the North American continent. Comprised of individual members, rather than corporate sponsors, the NAv6TF mission is to provide technical leadership and innovative thought for the successful integration of IPv6 into all facets of networking and telecommunications infrastructure, present and future.

Through its continued facilitation of technical and business case white papers, IPv6-centric conferences, IPv6 test and interoperability events and collaboration with IPv6 task forces from around the globe, the NAv6TF strives to be the guiding force for IPv6 adoption in the U.S. and Canada. For more information, visit the NAv6TF’s Web site at http://www.nav6tf.org/.

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