March 15, 2011 -- By now, all federal IT managers know IPv4 addresses ran out in February. Federal mandates require by the end of fiscal year 2012, external sites must be IPv6 compliant and by the end of fiscal year 2014, internal client applications must be IPv6 compliant.

Some industry pundits think this is an overly aggressive approach. From the perspective of someone in the trenches, how can you make the transition? Right now, many are using spreadsheets to handle the move to a 128-bit addressing scheme. This may be fine for now, but what do you do when managing the spreadsheet is a full time job?

Josh Stephens, vice president of technology for Solarwinds, discusses the Orion IP Address Manager (Orion IPAM). The tool gives IT managers visibility into tracking IP address space usage as well as historical address tracking.