By Roy Mark 03-23-04

A permanent U.S. backbone network employing the next Internet protocol, IPv6, has cleared a second set of tests, the North American IPv6 Task Force said Monday.

The new IPv6 backbone, which stretches from New Hampshire to California, now works with high-speed links, firewalls, routing, common applications and quality of service (QoS) standards for business applications, including multimedia.

The latest test was conducted by industry leaders, the North American IPv6 Task Force, the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL), Internet2 and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). It involved multiple service providers and networking companies in a two-week long series of trials covering network routing, security, applications and transition mechanisms.

"The success rates we've seen here argue that IPv6 is clearing the hurdles to inevitable adoption. We plan to continue industry-wide, multi-vendor testing on a rolling basis," said Ben Schultz, managing engineer at UNH-IOL.

Schultz added, "The core network will remain up and running to peer with Internet2, and dedicated links from service providers such as AT&T will be used to deploy applications and services on native IPv6."