Verizon Was Providing IPv6 for DOD Official Who Accused Networx Carriers of Shirking, Says Executive
When a Defense Department official accused most of the five Networx carriers of shunting aside federal agencies’ requests to do mandated IPv6 upgrades (CD Nov 3 p8), Verizon was already providing the department under his leadership with data-transport services supporting the protocol, an executive said Thursday. “We're very supportive of the Department of Defense IPv6” transition, the chief technology officer of Verizon Public Sector, Steve LeFrancois, said in an interview. He said he could see no reason for other carriers to discourage requests for help adopting the technology, which the Networx contractors have committed to offering.
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Sprint Nextel also responded to a request for comment about the statements in November by official Ron Broersma, a member of the Federal IPv6 Task Force, at the gogoNET conference in San Jose, Calif., that Networx carriers have told agencies that have approached them to support the technology not to ask for the work. The accusation has since been seconded by Vint Cerf, a Google vice president and longtime advocate for the transition. Neither would discuss specific carriers.
Sprint does “not talk specifically about our work with agencies unless we have their consent,” a spokeswoman said by email. “Sprint has not guided any of the agencies not to ask for IPv6. As a Networx contractor, a leading provider of IP services and a strong supporter of IPv6, we are supportive of the government mandates and are ready to work with agencies on their plans. We continue to see a growing interest in IPv6 across the agencies and are having more IPv6 conversations with them.” She didn’t get back to us right away about whether Sprint has done work supporting the protocol for agencies or has had to turn any away.
Two other Networx contractors, AT&T and Level 3, haven’t acknowledged several requests for comment, from November to this week. The fifth contractor, CenturyLink, has said it has done IPv6 work for federal agencies and has offered to provide examples. Broersma said any carrier that can’t or won’t provide the services risks the loss of federal work assignments. In September 2010, Vivek Kundra, then the federal chief information officer, issued an order for the government’s “public/external facing servers and services (e.g. web, email, DNS, ISP services, etc) to operationally use native IPv6” before October 2012.
"The Networx contract fully supports IPv6 services and they can be readily ordered from and fulfilled by the Networx carriers,” a General Services Administration spokeswoman said by email last month. “In our role as member and supporter of the Federal Working Group, we have not found an example of a new IPv6 order not being accepted by a Networx carrier. GSA and the Networx carriers have also on several occasions briefed the full Federal IPv6 Working Group on the carriers’ IPv6 capabilities and available agency support."
Most agencies “are in pretty good shape” to meet the September deadline, said Verizon’s LeFrancois. That’s despite being an unfunded mandate at variance with the main thrust of federal IT efforts, toward economizing, he said. Agencies, with their heavy investments in IT infrastructure, don’t have strong incentives of their own to move to IPv6, LeFrancois said.