| NATO and Alliance nations have identified the need for Network Enabled Capability (NEC) to achieve information superiority and reduced decision times with faster response. This paper explains the role of IPv6 in achieving NEC, and technical considerations for IPv6 in coalition operations.
The massive address space of IPv6 means that every networked element can have a globally unique address, enabling seamless end-to-end secure communication without network address translation (NAT). Removing NAT simplifies the network design, and improves the reliability, functionality, and manageability of the network. The paper discusses address allocation structures for coalition operations, and highlights the benefits of the rich set of IPv6 addressing modes to NEC.
NEC will offer secure multimedia services over geographically distributed diverse bearers to static and mobile elements, with efficient network utilisation. The paper shows that the IPv6 feature set of QoS, mobility, and scalability enables the NEC networking requirements to be met.
In a coalition scenario technical coordination is required to achieve seamless interoperability. This topic is discussed with reference to naming and addressing plans, controlled information sharing at network boundaries, and standardised interface definitions.
It is clear that the progression from existing coalition network architecture to the NEC will be a multi-year process with the ongoing use of transition mechanisms. A range of such mechanisms have been developed, and the paper discusses their use to support coalition operations.
The paper concludes by describing the way forward for IPv6 in NEC, and lists the open issues which need to be addressed.
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