The dearth of information regarding IPv6 migration costs, combined with the fact that many organizations are not sold on the purported benefits offered by the latest version of the Internet Protocol, is making the case for upgrading difficult to argue.
However, help might be on the way. The Department of Commerce plans to release an update to a 2004 interim report on IPv6 migration issues that will give the costs a hard look. While designed primarily for government use, the 2004 report outlined rough cost estimates for companies planning to upgrade to IPv6, and the follow-up report will offer specific dollar figures, says Brent Rowe, a research economist with RTI International, a not-for-profit research organization that aided the Commerce Department in the study. The updated report, under review at Commerce, is expected soon, he says.
One reason IPv6 upgrade costs are so hard to quantify is that, outside of government projects and test implementations at a handful of companies, few in this country use the 10-year-old protocol.
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“Nobody in this country has rolled it out in the way it will be rolled out in a few years,” says Tom Patterson, executive director of the IPv6 Business Council, chartered with finding a place for the upgraded protocol in the commercial world. Council members include Boeing and Bechtel.
This presents a chicken-and-egg problem: Companies are hesitant to upgrade to IPv6 in part because the costs are unclear, but until some organizations make the switch, costs won’t be clarified.
IPv6 is said to offer a number of technical benefits compared with its predecessor, IPv4, including easier administration, tighter security, and an enhanced addressing scheme. Despite those advantages, IPv6 has yet to become a must-have in corporate America, in part because organizations have found workarounds to a number of the limitations found in IPv4.
Yet attitudes toward the upgraded protocol could change following a mandate issued by the Office of Management and Budget last week dictating all federal government agencies must move their backbone networks to IPv6 by June 2008. Observers say this move will likely spur at least some adoption of IPv6 in the commercial market .
There’s also been movement among vendors that sell IPv6-compliant products, such as supercomputer maker Cray, to use the protocol internally. But corporations have largely ignored the updated protocol.
Moving to an IPv6 world will be a slow process because so many elements are involved, Patterson says. “We see the cost of IPv6 creeping into American businesses, rather than blasting in,” he says.
Routers and operating systems have included IPv6 for years. To migrate, most companies won’t have to replace those components. Yet other organizations, particularly those in government, are far from standardizing the most recent releases of many products – word is the Justice Department still runs Windows NT.
“No one’s going to go out and buy a new operating system or router just to get IPv6 benefits, which are up in the air anyway,” RTI International’s Rowe says.
Applications are the key to creating momentum toward IPv6, because those that take advantage of the upgraded protocol’s main features will enable companies to do business in a new way, Patterson adds.
But IPv6-enabled applications also represent the greatest unknown – cost, says David Powner, director of IT management issues with the Government Accountability Office. “With application development, that’s where you truly leverage the protocol, so that’s the big unknown right now.”
