NIST and the U.S. Government IPv6 Testing group announced that there is forward momentum in the IPv6 testing process!  Later this year, NIST plans on having a few accredited labs that will be able to test and certify products for IPv6 Capability according to NIST’s U.S. Government Profile for IPv6 Capability.

The test program will follow the standardized NVLAP process of accrediting laboratories as either 1st, 2nd or 3rd Party testing labs.  These labs will also be accredited for the types of testing they will be conducted along with the specifications they will follow.   Once the vendor IT product completes the testing at an accredited lab, they will be able to provide U.S. Government procurements with an IPv6 Suppliers Declaration of Conformity (IPv6 SDoC) along with an accredited lab test report.

The accreditation process is following two documents:

1. The ISO 17025 or NIST 150
2. NIST SP 500-273 IPv6 Test Methods: General Description and Validation

These labs will apply to be testers of conformance, interoperability, and/or network protection device testing.  All the currently approved test specifications are located here: http://www.antd.nist.gov/usgv6/test-specifications.html.  However, there are still quit a few specifications from the DoD being discussed and evaluated within the USG Testing Group.  They revolve around IPv6 privacy addressing, routing (BGP4+ and OSPFv3), SNMPv3 (corresponding MIBs), DHCPv6, QoS, and multiple transition mechanisms. Once they are reviewed and approved the resulting test specifications will be added to the overall list.

Currently there are (4) labs working on accreditation, but none have yet been accredited (current list is located here: http://www.antd.nist.gov/usgv6/labsandaccreds.html):

• ChungHwa Telecommunication Laboratory
• Command Information
• ICSA Labs
• UNH-IOL

Information on joining in on the discussion is here:

• usgv6-testing mailing list: usgv6-testing@antd.nist.gov
• http://www-x.antd.nist.gov/mailman/listinfo/usgv6-testing

Big Deal!!
The UNH-IOL is hosting a a test event to formerly evaluate the U.S. Government’s test specifications and procedures.  Test window is: 13-17 July 2009 (next week).  For more information go here: http://www.native6.com/blog/2009/06/29/ipv6-testing-evolution/ or here:  https://www.events.unh.edu/RegistrationForm.pm?event_id=5886

Until later!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 10:44 am and is filed under Jeremy Duncan, Blog: IPv6. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.