The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) in collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), today announced the completion of a test review event confirming the first test specifications for the US Government IPv6 (USGv6) Test Program. The new specifications resulting from the test review event will be used to test products for USGv6 compliance. The USGv6 Test Event took place at the UNH-IOL from July 13-17, 2009.

As of July 2010, U.S. Government agencies will require IPv6 compliant products in IT acquisitions. In light of this, the USGv6 Test Program, utilizing the NIST USGv6 profile, will provide government buyers and agencies guidance on the status of IPv6 in equipment they are purchasing. The USGv6 Test Program calls for IPv6 vendors to arrange for both conformance and interoperability product testing in order to comply with the profile. The USGv6 Test Event, held at the UNH-IOL, focused on interoperability product testing. It allowed vendors to pre-test USGv6 interoperability test specifications, lend technical expertise to interoperability test specification development, and gain a higher level of confidence of compliance before mandates. The USGv6 Test Event provided both the participants and test labs the opportunity to preview the interoperability portion of the USGv6 Test Program in a live test.

“NIST is working with IPv6 vendors, test labs and accreditors to establish an open and flexible USGv6 Test Program,” said Cita Furlani, director, NIST Information Technology Laboratory. “The UNH-IOL event is an important step towards building stakeholder consensus on USGv6 test specifications.”

The UNH-IOL operates a collaborative model in order to benefit the technical community as a whole. Thus, test specifications from the IPv6 Ready Logo program, Chunghwa Telecommunication Laboratories (CHT-TL), Department of Defense (DoD) and UNH-IOL were included during the USGv6 Test Event. The UNH-IOL took a lead role in the program to help harmonize existing testing programs with the aim of limiting redundancy in IPv6 testing worldwide. In addition, the UNH-IOL developed the test topologies for the USGv6 Test Event and coordinated the test specifications with the participants.

“We are honored to be collaborating with NIST on groundbreaking development in the creation of the nation’s new Internet infrastructure,” said Erica Johnson, director of the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory. “We look forward to continue being a focal point for industry to collaborate by offering an IPv6 Consortium membership for USGv6 testing.”

Companies and laboratories including CHT-TL, Cisco, Dell EqualLogic, HP, ICSA Labs, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, Nominum, Sun and v6Security participated in multi-vendor topologies and scenarios, which tested supported IPv6 protocols and features. The vendors collaborated with UNH-IOL and in some cases with competitors to review the proposed tests. As a result of the tests, UNH-IOL determined additional testing for representative deployments is needed in the area of security, specifically IKEv2 test specification. Participating vendors discovered the level of support needed to demonstrate features such as Address Architecture, MLDv2, DHCPv6, IPsec and OSPFv3 for USGv6-V1 compliance. The test methods determined as part of the USGv6 Test Program will be applied to all network devices that contain an IP stack.

The UNH-IOL has been testing IPv6 since 1996 and remains an industry leader. Highly involved in the IPv6 Ready Logo Program as the North American regional officer and a technical contributor, the UNH-IOL has also collaborated with the North American IPv6 Task Force (NAv6TF), DoD, equipment vendors and government agencies to host the Moonv6 test events, which spearheaded IPv6 testing worldwide.