A well written paper by the folks at DREN, the Defence Research and Engineering Network under the Defence Department’s High Performance Computing Modernization Program, can be found here: DREN Success Story. 

DREN, an early Hexago customer, is credited with having the first operating IPv6 network in the US government and this paper describes their real world experience in getting it operating and what they have identified as their six key factors of success.

DREN is leaps and bounds ahead of the US government OMB mandate which, among other things, dictated that by June 30, 2008:

“All agency infrastructures (network backbones) must be using IPv6 and agency networks must interface with this infrastructure. Agencies will include progress reports on meeting this target date as part of their EA transition strategy.”

Now, many US government departments and agencies interpreted this to mean flowing IPv6 packets between two core routers conveniently forgetting about the “interface with this infrastructure” part but not DREN.  They went above and beyond and ahead of schedule in their implementation and, in their words, “It is now time for federal stakeholders to travel the trail blazed by the DREN” or in my words “it is high time to get this party started”.

Bruce Sinclair