IPv6 was intended to fix these shortcomings. It uses a larger-capacity addressing scheme allowing a nearly infinite number of devices to have their own addresses. It also has built-in security and the ability to automatically configure itself onto a network, easing mobility and general network management. As such, it could enable anything from sensor networks that detect meteorological events to refrigerators that e-mail grocery lists to their owners’ cell phones.

That’s the short version. In reality it is impossible to learn everything you need to know about IPv6 from a single article. CIOs need to find out if there is anyone on their staff who knows anything about IPv6. If you’re lucky there might be. But don’t count on it. That means appointing an IPv6 champion who will be accountable, says Lisa Schlosser, CIO of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. "This person should have an executive sponsor and report to the CIO."

Step Two

Develop a Business Case

Every company in every industry should be able to think of some way that IPv6 can help its business. At the DoD, for example, Stenbit wanted to build a global information grid—a virtual map of communications, processing and storage from which users can pull the data they need to do their job, a vision that continues after his retirement. Most CIOs will find solutions to more ordinary challenges. At HUD, for example, housing inspections after disasters like Hurricane Katrina could be done more easily (with more IP addresses available) by inspectors carrying mobile devices instead of typing field reports into computers back at the office. "More addresses will let us extend our network," says Schlosser. When you increase your addresses you can collect this information in real-time."

For a construction company like Bechtel, IPv6 unleashes any number of possibilities that could come from combining IT systems with other systems like security cameras and air-conditioning units. For example, sensor networks made of small, wireless, IP-enabled devices can add new capabilities to the current facility management systems. If Bechtel builds a factory in a hot climate that will be open only 12 hours a day, the sensors can collect real-time climate and temperature information that can be combined with real-time electricity price information to help the company decide when it is most cost-effective to turn on the air-conditioning.

IPv6 can also reduce the cost and complexity of managing IT. In an IPv6 economic assessment released earlier this year, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) estimated that the new protocol would facilitate a move to voice over IP, which could result in a 20 percent decrease in communications spending for the average company. Furthermore, NIST estimated that IPv6 would save IT departments about 30 percent of their overall IT spend by eliminating the need for network address translation devices and associated practices that companies use to allow IPv4 to extend Internet access to the devices on their internal networks. IPv6 also allows for end-to-end security (more on this in Step 6), which would allow companies to phase out perimeter security tools like firewalls. IPv6 will also save CIOs and their staffs time, since it has the ability to auto-configure itself, which essentially makes an IPv6-capable device—a desktop, a security camera or an IP telephone—plug and play regardless of geography, with obvious advantages for the military and companies like Bechtel, cutting the time it takes to set up an on-location network. Today, Bechtel engineers have to re-terminate the voice and data network every time someone moves a trailer, says Fred Wettling, a fellow in Bechtel’s technology group. That goes away with IPv6. Within a corporation, IPv6 can facilitate better collaboration. Each IPv6 computer is able to act as its own server, meaning that users can connect to one another directly. One application that already takes advantage of this is Windows Vista, which allows IPv6 users to work inside the same Word document, spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation regardless of physical proximity and without going through a Web host.