IPv6 Experimental Results Portend Operational Benefits for Military Systems

Transitioning military systems to the next generation Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is a large and complex problem. The use of experimentation and validation in laboratory and field demonstrations, and field exercises are the optimal ways to illustrate the operational improvements of the advanced features of IPv6. Through the participation in Joint Users Interoperability Communications Exercise 2006 (JUICE 06), Program Executive Office Command, Control and Communications, Tactical (PEO C3T) Common Hardware Systems Product Directorate (PD CHS), in collaboration with CERDEC S&TCD, successfully demonstrated the use of IPv6 advanced features, namely auto-configuration and network mobility (NEMO). The results of JUICE 06 showed how the use of IPv6 would provide the military with improvements in network initialization, tactical reorganization and mobility with minimal user intervention. CHS plans future expanded experimentation and participation in JUICE 07. The future work will provide a framework for quantitative IPv6 performance metrics. Using an automated test tool, CHS will generate traffic at varying packet sizes and traffic rates to provide information pertaining to network performance, such as throughput, latency and packet loss.