IPv6: Defense's New Mechanism

t could be the most significant development for IT spending and government sales since the Y2K threat loomed large at federal agencies, industry insiders say: Imagine a soldier in a war zone taking misfire information from his weapon and feeding it directly into his Web-connected handheld computer"sending an alert out to his command post and saving lives in the process. Now, stop imagining. This scenario and numerous others are emerging in the real world, thanks to a new Internet standard called IPv6, shorthand for Internet Protocol Version 6. Not only will IPv6 open up a new frontier of interactive communications between devices and the Net, industry experts say, but it will vastly increase the IP address space"a much-needed freeing-up of online real estate, given current and anticipated demand. Frankly, the industry is getting a bit giddy in anticipation. The Department of Defense (DoD) is now seeking to establish IPv6 in all Internet and intranet systems departmentwide by fiscal year 2008. Being that the DoD often leads government-agency purchasing trends, other announcements are anticipated, with Transportation and Homeland Security among the many also voicing interest in IPv6. Commerce has already asked for public comment. In June, an estimated 600 industry executives attended an IPv6 conference in Santa Monica, Calif., sponsored by the task force and a Who's Who of IT players"Cisco, IBM, Intel and Microsoft. Much of the interest now has been triggered by the Defense mandate, and how it may influence a huge ripple effect throughout all of the federal government. "Defense has great purchasing power," says conference attendee Bill Berkman, vice president of marketing for ClearSight Networks, a San Mateo, Calif.-based network monitoring/analysis vendor. "It can lead by example to other departments by this adoption. Indeed, most or all of the larger private-sector companies who service Defense are beginning to ramp up and address changes to accommodate the new standard, and we're seeing a domino effect with the smaller subcontractors as a result."

Out In the Field

Typically, when the hype machine starts touting about the Next Big Thing, eyes start rolling in skepticism"especially for an Internet-based development. But IPv6 is likely to take channel-sales opportunities into fresh and lucrative terrain, experts say, thanks to the standard's unique qualities:

Communications from device to the Internet. Wearable devices. Combat weapons. Mobile weather-detection equipment. Cell phones. Nano-sensor technology...the list of possibilities is endless. The government customer is now dependent on such tools, and IPv6 promises to serve as the bridge that will allow data to flow from the field to the desktop or laptop and, ultimately, into the agency's network.

"Mobility is a key goal of the military's IPv6 initiative," says Curt Edsall, another conference attendee and program manager of information-management solutions at RGII Technologies, an Annapolis, Md.-based reseller working with military medical organizations to meet the DoD's deadline for IPv6 conversion. "Defense would like to take computing devices and go anywhere with them while maintaining a discrete identity," he adds. "In terms of where IPv6 will spread in the federal marketplace? It will benefit all government agencies that want ubiquitous data access, both internally and with their constituents. When it comes to military health care, we envision thermometers, blood-pressure cuffs and the likes that are IPv6-networked and transmitted to specialists across the globe."

Running Out of Addresses

Increased address space: The current Internet uses a 32-bit IP address system that allows for more than four billion individual addresses on the Internet. IPv6 uses a 128-bit system that has a relatively endless capacity. (Technically, it allows for 340,282,366,920, 938463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses.)

"The government has seen this coming for a long time," says Jason Eftink, co-founder and CEO of Technology and Networking, a Scott City, Mo.-based reseller that partners with Microsoft, SilverBack and other major vendors on IPv6 business. "We are simply running out of IP addresses. Just as the Y2K problem focused on the flaws related to having two digits instead of four to designate a year, this points to the problems with addresses. Soon, every PC, telephone and PDA"as well as all the devices yet to be invented"will need an IP address." Eftink indicates that industry estimates"while not based on hard research but more on ballparking by execs involved"value the IPv6 fed sales market to be worth $10 billion within the next seven years.

Only half a dozen reseller/integrator companies went to the recent conference, however, organizers say. That's a telling signal as to where IPv6 is on the radar, and where the next big growth stage will be. Industry leaders say that now is the most crucial time for VARs and integrators to get involved. IPv6 has been in existence since 1994 as a developing Internet standard. Now that its deployment has taken off as of last year, the time is ripe for vendors to be evaluating which reseller partners to team up with. "This is really the next, big phase," says Jim Bound, who chairs the Arlington, Va.-based North American IPv6 Task Force. "Integrators/resellers should be working with their vendor partners to develop a transition strategy. It would be of great use for them to contact us personally, to get the industry perspective on standards and deployment models. Our job is to get them connected," he says.

On Nov. 15-16, the task force will hold a seminar in Washington, D.C., that will focus on transition and security. Right now, Defense officials feel that the current Internet protocol"in use for three decades now"hinders its troops' network operations, with disparate functions, devices and data resulting in potentially dangerous situations in battle, which is a key motivation behind the mandate.

"It is now time for the North American private sector to step forward in developing the applications and appliances that will ultimately drive the widespread deployment of IPv6 networks," says Alex Vaxmonsky, a solutions engineer at Verio, an Englewood, Colo.-based Web-hosting and Internet-provider services company that works with VARs such as McLean, Va.-based Advanced Technology Systems, to serve government customers.

"Defense has indicated that its Secret Internet Protocol Router Network or the Non-Classified Internet Protocol Router Network might be one of the programs switched over to IPv6, and that the Navy Marine Corps Intranet also is being considered," Vaxmonsky says. "We've demonstrated that we're developing machine-to-machine technologies using IPv6 that can be conducted between appliances and computers, any time and any place."

VARs At the Ready

For their part, top government-sales resellers are ready. While the need for IPv6 support will cover any device linked to the Internet, the transition is expected to be slow at first, then build momentum, they say.

"This is comparable to the United States Postal Service implementing the ZIP code system," says Glenn A. Hirsh, an enterprise architect for GTSI, a Chantilly, Va.-based government reseller that works with vendors such as Cisco, IBM, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems on solutions for this protocol. "Today, we use a ZIP code with ease, even though the transition may not have been easy. Support for IPv6 will typically be handled as normal software maintenance by many of the large IT vendors. Because many of the devices today run on software, it is the software that primarily will have to be modified or upgraded, making the replacement of the actual hardware rather limited," Hirsh says.

Still there are hurdles to conquer, including a documented case of a security flaw exploited by a hacker.

"Although IPv6 is more secure from a design perspective, IPv6 implementations have not been exposed to anywhere near the same amount of testing as previous standards and networks," says John Nakulski, product manager at Agilent Technologies, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based company that is working with vendors to improve the performance and security of IPv6-linked firewalls and routers for Defense and other government customers. Those security flaws are a source of sales for VARs.

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