Notional Security Architecture for the Department of Defense (DoD) Networks Transitioning to Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)

The United States (US) Department of Defense (DoD) has been tasked by the DoD chief information officer (DoD CIO) to transition its networks from Internet protocol (IP) version 4 (IPv4) to IP version 6 (IPv6) by fiscal year 2008 (FY08). This will be a daunting task and presents significant challenges to DoD network architects, engineers and operators. One of the most difficult challenges will be to ensure that sensitive DoD information is not compromised by the introduction of IPv6. Currently, DoD information assurance (IA) professionals are studying this problem and architecting solutions to mitigate these risks. In this paper, we present a notional security architecture for DoD networks transitioning to IPv6