Once, online degrees were met with snickers. More recently, though, it's gotten support as the number of reputable institutions issuing them has gone up. After a while, online training -- and testing -- within higher education has become valid, trustworthy and much more accepted.

Herein lies the rub: We're OK with granting lifetime post-secondary degrees to IT candidates, but not with giving them certifications that are meaningful for only two years unless they go to a proctored site and prove they really are who they say they are before taking a multiple-choice test?

Either IT vendors know much more than academics, or VUE and Prometric have carved out a comfortable niche.

More on Microsoft Certified Master
Microsoft has released more information on the Microsoft Certified Master Certification it unveiled a few weeks ago.

This upper-level certification will be a prerequisite for the Architect certification and is available in three specializations:

• Exchange Server 2007
• SQL Server 2008
• Windows Server 2008

While all of these require taking the usual cadre of exams, the experience requirements are interesting. For Windows Server 2008, for example, almost all the candidate prerequisites center around Active Directory (five years experience, 300+ level understanding of features) and -- oh, yeah -- the ability to "speak, understand and write in fluent English."

More information on this new certification can be found here. Note that Microsoft recently made some slight changes to the Learning Web site. The site now requires the Silverlight plug-in, which you'll be prompted to install upon visiting.

Book of the Week: 'Global IPv6 Strategies'
Just you wait. One of these days, IPv6 is going to live up to is plenteous promise. It is a great protocol and a forward-thinking solution that will help carry IT well into the future.

Its problem, of course, has always been that it was paired with the threat that IPv4 wouldn't live past the next month, year, decade, etc.

Global IPv6 Strategies by Patrick Grossetete, Ciprian Popoviciu and Fred Wettling is the best book on the topic I've found. Its 400 pages fill six chapters that cover everything from the business importance of IP communications, to IPv4 and IPv6 myths, to IPv6 migration planning.

The chapter on adoption strategies appealed most to me. It should come as no surprise that the United States is trailing behind several other countries in its acceptance of the technology. As the book points out, in 2001 the European Union publicly stated that IPv4 is "stifling" its economic growth.

If we're to keep up with the rest of the world, it's important that we understand as much as we can about this technology and develop a strategy that will ease the integration of it in our own environments.