Quite simply, the system will run out of addresses some years from now without IPv6. (ARIN, a regional Internet registry organization that provides services related to the management of Internet number resources, won’t comment on when those IPv4 addresses will run out.)

Other countries, notably China, have pushed the implementation of IPv6 more aggressively than the United States.

Among the other possible benefits of IPv6, the technology enables a more simplified network architecture that removes network address translation devices, clearing the way for powerful peer-to-peer capabilities, says Erica Johnson, senior manager of software and applications and IPv6 consortium manager at the University of New Hampshire’s InterOperability Laboratory. The lab oversees the Moonv6 project, a global effort to test IPv6 equipment from different vendors.

IPv6 also includes a greater amount of usable address space for additional nodes on the network, allowing better utilization of multiuser technologies such as VoIP, interactive video and collaborative applications, she notes. But Johnson concedes that even with the potential gains from IPv6, building a business case for adoption will be a challenge for many. “A lot of that has to do with testing and education,” she says. “It’s not going to be a light switch; we don’t have a Y2K effect with deploying IPv6.”

Some analysts are more blunt. “Commercial enterprises have little reason to adopt IPv6,” says David Willis, research VP at Gartner. “Migration costs are very high for established IP networks, and attempts to transition even moderate-size networks have revealed many unexpected problems and hidden costs.”

Willis says most of the benefits of IPv6 “can be delivered with current IP [IPv4] workarounds such as network address translation and IPsec [the Internet security protocol].”

Willis adds that he expects IPv6 to “creep into the enterprise as we see stronger Vista rollouts in 2008.” Enterprises will use various approaches to support both IPv4 and IPv6 for several years, he says.

Early Adopter Lessons
CIOs starting to explore the IPv6 issue can learn from the approach of early adopters like engineering and construction giant Bechtel. By 2003, the U.S. Department of Defense, a big Bechtel customer, had called for departmentwide deployment of IPv6 by 2008. Bechtel began seeing RFPs from the U.S. Army and other customers explicitly calling for IPv6 products and services. So in 2004, Bechtel launched a phased, enterprisewide deployment of IPv6 “designed to develop broad awareness and competence in the new protocol, with the initial deployment focused on our government business unit,” says Fred Wettling, Bechtel fellow and technology strategy manager.