Juniper's NetScreen to Get IPv6

CHICAGO Supercomm – Juniper Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: JNPR) will take the next step towards integrating the NetScreen Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: NSCN) product range next week, following its $4 billion dollar acquisition of the security specialist earlier this year (see Juniper Buys NetScreen).

Speaking at Supercomm, Juniper executives told NDCF that they will use next week’s Networld+Interop event in Tokyo to extend IPv6 support to five of NetScreen’s security products.

Juniper’s M, T, and E-series routers already provide support for IPv6. This will now be extended to NetScreen’s 5XT, 204, 208, 500, and 5200 products. In all cases, Juniper will offer support for both IPv4 and IPv6 in the same product -- because IPv6 networks will remain as islands in an IPv4 Internet sea for the foreseeable future.

The company’s decision to make this announcement in Japan is no coincidence: The Asian market is regarded as the sweet spot for IPv6. The perceived shortage of IP addresses, which originally prompted the development of IPv6, has not so far become a major issue in the U.S. Hence, U.S. firms remain ambivalent about the protocol.

The move comes only two weeks after Juniper made its first post-merger product announcement, unveiling the NetScreen 5GT ADSL security appliance and three new enterprise routers (see Juniper Attacks the Enterprise).Even though product news like this is just starting to filter out, Juniper executives are still refusing to provide details of their roadmap, although they did confirm that the IPv6 support will eventually be extended across the entire NetScreen product range.

In the long term, Juniper is also hoping to gain some wins with the Federal Government. The Department of Defense, for example, is already planning to fully adopt IPv6 in its network by 2008. In the run-up to Supercomm there were also some signs that IPv6 is picking up momentum outside of its Asia/Pacific stronghold (see Test Vendors Target VOIP, IPV6).

Ron Westfall, principal analyst at Current Analysis, says there's a good chance that Juniper will make in-roads into the government and even the financial sector with its IPv6 range of products: “They will be able to win some of the usual suspects among organizations where security is a priority like Government or banks...

”I wouldn’t be surprised if Asia/Pacific generated some of the best customer wins."

Juniper is not the only company with an IPv6 story. Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) already supports IPv6 in the Cisco IOS software, across a number of products in its Access range.— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-gen Data Center Forum