UNH-IOL Tests IPv6 for the Enterprise

The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) has completed a series of multi-vendor tests that assessed how well basic enterprise networking fares on Internet protocol version 6, the next incarnation of today's IP networking standard.



Using the Moonv6 network, the largest permanently deployed multi-vendor IPv6 network in the world, 13 companies tested networking-intensive office applications such as Adobe's Dreamweaver and Microsoft's MeetingPlace over the new protocol. The testing also essayed many of the essential components of basic enterprise networking, such as file sharing, printing and security. Still to be put to trial is e-mail and a greater variety of enterprise QoS and network management tools.



"Most issues were implementations, not the protocol, and this suggests that for common system admins there will be something of a learning curve in setting up for IPv6," said Erica Johnson, IPv6 consortium manager at the UNH-IOL.



The list of participating companies included major enterprise IT vendors such as Adobe, Alcatel-Lucent, Command Information, Counterpath, Hewlett Packard, Hexago, Ixia, Juniper, Konica Minolta, Microsoft and Xerox.



Additional information is online.

http://www.iol.unh.edu