Government organizations' advantages and disadvantages in transitioning to IPv6

¶ … Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) technology, one of the technologies listed on Gartner's 2004 Hype Cycle that has high visibility today because new IPv4 addresses are nearly exhausted. On the 2012 Hype Cycle, IPv6 is now listed in the "Trough of Disillusionment," yet the U.S. government is still directing that transition to this protocol continue:

Name at least three advantages that government organizations will gain by transitioning to IPv6 technology today, in 2013. Explain why.

The government may actually do well by transitioning to IPv6 technology. There are3 various reasons for its doing so. Three of the reasons are the following:

More Efficient Routing

Given that government networking and cloud computing can be 'stuffed' with heavy traffic, it is essential that the government archives as effective a routing process as possible. This is particularly so since it is essential for the government to have instant and faultless communication with its many recipients and nodes. IPv6 technology can help the government achieve this efficient routing by IPv6 technology reducing the size of routing tables and making the routing more hierarchical.

The government has many customers and dealing with each of these prefixes can be cumbersome and lengthy. The benefit of to IPv6 technology is that aggregates each of these prefixes into one single one and announces this prefix to the IPv6 technology Internet.

Additionally, routing is also made more efficient by fragmentation being handled by the source device instead of by the router as is done by other devices.

3. Directed Data Flows

The government often has to reach numerous destinations simultaneously. This makes it a perfect match for IPv6 technology. IPv6 supports multicast rather than broadcast, and multicast allows bandwidth-intensive packet flows (that are like multimedia streams) to be sent to numerous destinations simultaneously. This saves network bandwidth disinterested hosts no longer need to process broadcast packets

Furthermore -- and this is also immensely beneficial to the government - the IPv6 header also has a new field, called Flow Label that can identify packets belonging to the same flow. (Network Computing)

2. Name at least two disadvantages that government organizations will have to face if they transitioning to IPv6 technology today, in 2013. Explain why.

The most significant disadvantage is that there is no clear plan in sight for transitioning from IPV4 to IPV6. Recent versions of all operating systems including Microsoft, Linux, and Apple's Mac OS X do incorporate IPV6, but these are operating systems and it is still unclear how Internet will make the transition. The degree of backwards compatibility between internet and IPV6 is limited, aside from which there is a lot to work through. A smooth speedy and non-complex transition is unlikely. The problem to government is that the more flawed and complex the process, the more painful and messy it may likely be for end users with mistakes common at least in its beginning stages.

Not every machine either can accept IPV6, aside from which it would take a huge amount of time for government to make the transition.

2. Security issues

There is the failure of the Microsoft IPv6 IP Security (IPSec) protocol. IPSec supports the use of Authentication Header (AH) and Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) for both transport and tunnel modes but Microsoft ESP doesn't support data encryption.

More so, IPV6 does not support Internet Key Exchange (IKE) that negotiates security associations (SAs). The security keys too have to be manually configured which makes it more tedious and can cause errors causing the data security to eventually break as the captured sample of data increases. (Tech Republic)

Sources

Tech Republic Consider the pros and cons of IPv6 http://www.techrepublic.com/article/consider-the-pros-and-cons-of-ipv6/5429361

Network Computing Six Benefits of IPv6

http://www.networkcomputing.com/ipv6/six-benefits-of-ipv6/230500009