How will ARIN change under your leadership?

ARIN has been running fairly well. I don't expect any dramatic changes. I bring the perspective of someone who has run two successful carriers with very large nationwide networks and recent experience with a hosting company. I expect to keep the customer focus at ARIN, and to perhaps sharpen it.

What is the most pressing issue facing ARIN today?

IPv4 address depletion is the most pressing issue facing the Internet community today and for many years to come. The fact that we've been ready for this for a decade doesn't make the transition that we will be going through over the next five years all that much easier. The fact that we've been ready for 10 years adds to the complacency. Rather than averting a sense of crisis, it's caused a lot of people to question: Is this going to happen? Yes, we are going to run out of free IPv4 addresses, and organizations that want to be able to make use of the Internet will need to support IPv6.

ARIN has always been a behind-the-scenes organization. Do you see that changing in the future?

ARIN will continue to operate behind the scenes, but the very nature of the challenge ahead of us with the depletion of IPv4 free space will cause the regional registries and the entire Internet community to be much more visible to the business community. Businesses that are building an infrastructure based on the Internet and don't realize that a change is in front of them are in for a surprise.

What is your view of IPv6 transition in North America?

There's a lot of work going on, particularly in the carriers. The carriers obviously need to work aggressively to make their infrastructures support both IPv4 and IPv6, and I know all the major carriers have plans to do that. We're just now beginning to see work on the applications at the edge of the network. The Web servers, mail servers, firewalls and intrusion-detection systems that support IPv6 are beginning to make their way into the enterprise, government and content providers. There's a lot of groundwork going on. We'll see more visible activity as organizations take their Web servers and e-mail servers and make them dual stack to support IPv4 and IPv6. Could more be done? Absolutely. There are organizations that haven't begun planning their public-facing IPv6 connectivity, and that work should begin immediately.

If you were addressing a room full of U.S. CIOs, what would you advise them about IPv6?