IPv6: How much will it cost?

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget is hanging tough with its mandate to start rolling out IPv6 across the entire federal government by 2008. The estimated cost for the U.S. government's transition to IPv6 is pegged at approximately $25 billion over 25 years. Last week, defense contractor Lockheed Martin announced that it would roll out IPv6 on and between ten locations of its Global Vision Network, spanning from California to the United Kingdom. The new protocol is expected to be up and running by next month. It turns out that many early adopters are finding the transition to IPv6 to be relatively simple because the new protocol is already supported by all current operating systems and the majority of current routers. As a result, the basic upgrade is relatively painless and cheap for almost everyone except the operators of fast networks that use slightly older routers, according to an article in Ars Technica. Still, there are some challenging areas that need to be overcome, including tough issues with certain firewalls and load balancers. 

For all the details on IPv6:
- read the article in Ars Technica