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As advanced IP applications make their way onto corporate networks, researchers and service providers hope to see a corresponding move to IPv6, the long-suffering replacement to IPv4.

Yet pilot projects aimed at proving IPv6's mettle haven't shown how the protocol can propel businesses to a paradise full of advanced IP applications. Application work has been secondary to infrastructure tests.

At the Moonv6 test bed, for example, researchers have conducted detailed tests of the IPv6 routing protocol and the Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet but have not yet tackled advanced applications, says Ben Schultz, managing engineer at the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab, in Durham. UNH administers the Moonv6 test bed, which is a collaboration among the Internet2 university consortium, the North American IPv6 Task Force and the U.S. Department of Defense. IPv6, developed by the IETF, touts IPSec and simple administration for tight security and, with its 128-bit address space, supports an almost unlimited amount of uniquely identified systems on the Internet.

While Schultz acknowledges a lack of advanced application development geared toward IPv6 today, he says he's looking forward to testing real-time collaboration tools and other applications to show how IPv6 will perform. Application work at the Moonv6 test bed to date has centered on running streaming media unicast and multicast applications across the network, he says.

Lessons learned and deployment tips from advanced application testing might help turn the tide for IPv6 adoption in business, where the protocol is still seen as a down-the-road technology.

"We've done some research on IPv6," says Vijay Sankaran, manager of enterprise technology for Ford Motor's IT Group in Dearborn, Mich. "But it's still undetermined where the protocol will play."

IPv6 is "more efficient for the routing of messages and being able to know who your endpoint address is," says Sankaran, a member of the IPv6 Business Council. But, he adds, "everything we do for our business needs a core driver. And one thing we've been struggling with is that while this packet header can have additional information on it, we haven't found the applications that would have us invest money to go to an IPv6 network."

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