Researchers involved in the project Moonv6, the world’s largest native IPv6 test, have demonstrated that the Network Time Protocol runs over IPv6, the long anticipated upgrade to the Internet’s main protocol.

Here is a intro sentence which leaves you dubitative.
It is done purposely.

Founded in 2002, Moonv6 is a joint operation of the University of New Hampshire, the U.S. Defense Department, the North American IPv6 Task Force and the Internet2 university consortium. 'Cause Yes, Internet 2 is a reality, and is a non-profit consortium which develops and deploys advanced network applications and technologies, mostly for high-speed data transfer. Its purpose is to develop and implement applications and technologies up to 10 Go/s as IPv6, IP multicasting, Quality of Service. The goal is not to create a separated network but to ensure that the new applications can work on the current Internet.

And IPv6 ? pronounce Internet Protocol version 6.
Because of a shortage of address on current protocol IP (version 4), but also to solve some of the problems revealed by its use on large scale, the transition towards IPv6 started in 1995. Among the essential innovations, one can quote:

• the increase from 2³² to 2¹²⁸ of available addresses ;

• mechanisms of configuration and automatic renumerotation ;

• IPsec, QoS and multicast ;

• the simplification of the headings of packages, which facilitates in particular the routing.

The Network Time Protocole should less interest you. It is a protocol for synchronizing the clocks of computer systems over packet-switched, variable-latency data networks. NTP uses UDP port 123 as its transport layer. It is designed particularly to resist the effects of variable latency.

Back to the news: researchers set up a wide-area link between the University of New Hampshire and the military’s Joint Interoperability Test Center at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. to run NTP over both regular IP (known as IPv4) and the emerging IPv6.

"This is the first time anyone has demonstrated NTP over an IPv6 WAN," says Erica Williamsen, an IPv6 engineer at the UNH Interoperability Lab. "Both sites were able to synchronize time."

Voila, great, we learn many things about the Internet 2.


Source: NetworkWorld, last week.
For those who do not know:
- As example of this high-speed network that is Internet2, these researchers could download 860 Go in less than twenty minutes. Equivalent of 180 DVDs in a small van which goes through Brussels.
- With the new protocol IPv6, 2¹²⁸ fixed addresses will be availables on the Internet. Will it be enough? In the future, should we foresee another shortage? Actually, that represents 667 millions of billions addresses by mm² on the Earth.