Government, Industry Officials Say IPv6 Ready to Forward Agency Objectives

Installing IPv6 advances agency objectives, panelists said. For the Defense Department, switching to IPv6 will significantly speed network deployment overseas, said Kris Strance, head of DoD’s IPv6 transition. With IPv4, it can take “weeks or months” to set up networks in Iraq, he said. With version 6, it will take “hours or days.”

Some hesitation to upgrade to IPv6 results from the absence of a “killer app,” panelists said. Strance said he’s asked every day what IPv6’s killer app will be. He doesn’t give a straight answer anymore, because “we can’t foresee what that killer app is, and we won’t know what it is until” IPv6 is out there for developers to play with, he said. Fred Schobert, chief technology officer for GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, agreed. “As that killer network gets deployed, smart folks will figure out how to develop that killer application.” A better question to ask is “What applications am I denying myself by staying where I am?” Lee said. IPv4 is an “app killer.”

Setting up compliant IPv6 isn’t as costly as some might fear, Schobert said. When GSA set up a test network, it found “that in the core network, it really didn’t take much investment at all.” He said, “The primary cost, and it was somewhat significant, was in the network administration and labor to write the security plans, to write the network plans, and to be able to actually put the network in place.”

Agencies making IPv6 plans should “think in terms of business outcomes” and “make it your provider’s challenge to figure out how” to make them happen, Lee said. “You'll end up with better service and it will cost you less money.” It’s like buying a cellphone, he said. When someone goes to a wireless store to buy a phone, they don’t say, “Oh, and by the way, I need 64 kilobits to go with it. You're saying ‘I want to talk to somebody.'” Plans need to be flexible, he said. “If you're building an architecture, I want you to recognize that walls can define a garden or a prison,” Lee said. “You shouldn’t let plans become a set of handcuffs that bind what you do in the future.”

IPv6 isn’t without weaknesses, panelists said. Security questions are keeping the Defense Department from turning on IPv6, Strance said. “Security is the long pole in the tent for us.” IPv6 security products don’t meet DoD needs, though some are being developed and will be tested by the National Security Agency, he said. “It will be a while before at least the DoD feels comfortable in actually having an operational network.”

“I would not be so quick to say that you can’t use v6 and build security,” Lee said, citing “a fundamental difference between public networking and private networking.” Security for the public Internet “will all get done over time and does not exist today,” he said. For private networking, however, “you can build secure enclaves and use v6,” Lee said. “It’s when you try to commingle them that things get very delicate.”

Despite movement to IPv6, IPv4 will be around “for the rest of my working life,” Lee said. That’s because most IPv4 apps won’t be rewritten in IPv6 until they need to be, and developers are still writing new ones, he said. For that reason, Verizon sells a backward-compatible dual-stack system, he said. “I can’t tell you that the entire Internet is going to monolithically move [to IPv6]. They don’t monolithically do anything.”

The U.S. government “doesn’t constitute enough buying authority” to power the IPv6 market globally, Lee said. Other countries beat the U.S. to IPv6 because their need to upgrade from IPv4 was “overwhelming,” he said. From a U.S. perspective, IPv4 still seems adequate because the U.S. “allocated a whole bunch of IP address space” to itself -- “the government in particular,” he said. “But when you look globally, you'll find out there are entire nations with no address space whatsoever.” The U.S. “can spark and drive interest domestically,” but it won’t be the one “driving the entire Internet to move to v6.” Verizon plans to be v6- enabled globally by 2010, he added. -- Adam Bender

IPv6 Notebook…

Federal agencies should look past a June 30 deadline for installing IPv6 and consider ways to use the Internet technology from July 1 on, Federal IPv6 Working Group Chairman Peter Tseronis told a Wednesday IPv6 conference. The move to IPv6 was ordered by OMB. Some agencies, like the IRS and Tseronis’ Education Department, have made the switch, while others are “still struggling,” he said. Agencies should see the order as an opportunity, he said: “I don’t like the term ‘mandate.'” Agencies can be sold on IPv6, Tseronis said. He convinced his department to adopt the technology by outlining agency goals and explaining how IPv6 could streamline work and cut costs, he said. “The Internet today works fine,” but IPv6 is more efficient, Tseronis said. The protocol adds control over traffic flow, improving security, quality and management. Not going IPv6 would be worrisome, he said. The IPv4 address space is expected to exhaust by 2011, and when it does, it won’t be possible to expand or to add applications, he said. IPv4 users may not be able to communicate with the IPv6 community, splintering the Internet, he said. Agencies that don’t switch may not be prepared for “dramatic changes” IPv6 effects in commercial and international markets, he said.