Federal IT officials lack knowledge of IPv6, haven’t finalized plans to upgrade to the next-generation IP and haven’t received funding for the migration, according to a survey due for release Monday by Cisco.
The survey consisted of 200 telephone interviews with federal IT officials that were conducted in May by research firm Market Connections.
The survey was designed to measure attitudes about IPv6 within U.S. government agencies, which are under a mandate from the Office of Management and Budget to upgrade their network backbones to support IPv6 by 2008.
Cisco officials said the survey findings show the challenges that IPv6 vendors face in convincing the federal market about the benefits of IPv6.
“We are still in the educational phase about IPv6,” says Ron Schwarz, director of operations, federal area, at Cisco. “There’s a gap between the business people and the IT departments about what IPv6 is and what it does. The survey also shows that there’s a significant risk management or risk mitigation component we have to deal with in IPv6 implementations.”
IPv6 was created a decade ago by the IETF to ward off an anticipated address space crunch with IPv4, the Internet’s current protocol. IPv6, which uses a 128-bit addressing scheme, supports an almost limitless number of uniquely identified systems on the ‘Net, while IPv4 supports only a few billion systems because it uses a 32-bit addressing scheme.
IPv6’s other features include built-in security via IPSec, easier administration and improved QoS. IPv6 also supports ad hoc networking, which shows promise for wireless and other mobile applications.
Despite its many benefits, IPv6 has been slow to catch on in either the federal or commercial markets in the United States, where IPv4 address space is plentiful. IPv6 advocates are hoping that the federal government’s mandate to IPv6 will encourage widespread adoption of the technology.
The Cisco-sponsored survey found that IPv6 still has a long way to go before it is widely understood or embraced in the federal market.
Federal IT officials had a tough time coming up with any benefits of IPv6. Only 10% of survey respondents listed security, while 9% listed more IP addresses.
Survey respondents didn’t seem to understand the connection between IPv6 and mobility either, Cisco officials said.
“There’s a lack of connection between killer applications that require IPv6 in the eyes of the IT workforce. There are higher-level business managers in federal organizations that understand what IP address space can do in terms of digitization of devices. But the IT folks don’t know about it,” Schwarz says.
In terms of planning, less than 2% of respondents have completed their IPv6 planning process and only 14% have begun their IPv6 implementation process. More than one third of respondents – 38% – will not complete their IPv6 planning or implementation process until 2007.
The planning figures are “kind of lower than I thought,” says Randy Hall, marketing manager for network solutions at Cisco. “I would have thought by now that everyone had begun their IPv6 planning.”
One reason that IPv6 deployments are behind is the lack of funding. Fully 60% of respondents had not yet begun to receive funding approval for IPv6.
The top challenge facing IPv6 implementations was funding, which was selected by 62% of respondents. Other challenges that IPv6 implementations face is that other projects get higher priority – according to 51% of respondents – and there is a lack of experienced agency staff, which was cited by 45% of respondents.
On the plus side, more than half of respondents – 53% – said they were somewhat or very likely to consider IPv6 even if it had not been mandated by OMB.
The survey results ring true to Jim Bound, CTO of the IPv6 Forum and chair of the North American IPv6 Task Force. Bound, who is a senior fellow at HP, says IPv6 is taking longer than proponents had hoped but it is happening.
“In reality, the actual deployments have been test beds – not major production systems,” Bound says. “The main issue is cost. The networking market was hurt by the dot-bomb collapse and the slow-down in 3G wireless systems. Now the market is on fairly solid ground, and IPv6 is on the radar. They all feel like they have to do it.”
Bound agrees that federal IT officials are running behind on developing IPv6 plans, but he believes that agencies can meet their 2008 deadline to have backbones capable of carrying IPv6 traffic. He says agencies shouldn’t be getting IPv6 funds until their plans are completed.
“Nothing discourages me anymore,” Bound says of the survey findings. “I know IPv6 is going to happen. It might be in 2010. It might be in 2020, and then I’ll be retired….It’s all a question of how does it get out there and get deployed. It may be that people will move at the rate of technology refresh” if they don’t get earmarked funds.
Of the survey respondents, 72% were from civilian agencies and 28% from Defense-related agencies. Nearly two-thirds of the survey respondents – 63% – evaluate IT products and services for their agencies, while the others were managers who use IT in the programs they oversee.
