Yusuke Aoyama
IPv6Style
An IPv6 seminar hosted by the US Commercial Service at the US Embassy in Tokyo was held on July 12th. Mr. Alex Lightman, the CEO of Innofone, a company that provides IPv6 related consulting services, was the speaker, and he primarily talked about the latest IPv6 trends in the US federal government. He mostly repeated what he talked about in his keynote speech at the Federal IPv6 Summit held in May; however, some of the information was updated so I will focus my report on the updated information.
Mr. Alex Lightman (right) with Mr. Toshihiro Matsuda from the US Commercial Service at the US Embassy in Tokyo, the host of the seminar
Mr. Lightman started off by saying, “Some of you probably are thinking why I, an American, am giving a talk about IPv6 when Japan is the most advanced country in the world when it comes to IPv6.” However, he explained that while there are not yet many companies who are making large profits using IPv6, Innofone, where he serves as CEO, is making large profits by providing IPv6-related consulting services to US federal government agencies; he said that the best way to make a profit with IPv6 is to work with them.
In the US, at this point, there are still hardly any IPv6 services for consumers. Although Windows Vista will support IPv6 by default, currently no actual service that uses Vista’s IPv6 features exists.
However, what people are most interested in right now with regards to IPv6 in the US is the trends in the US federal government, especially in the Department of Defense (DoD). First, a budget of $50 million is prepared for the DoD’s core network IPv6 transition, as well as application transition planning, for fiscal year 2007. Also for fiscal year 2008, the year that the overall transition starts, a $150 million budget is planned.
Even though people refer to them all as the “military”, the military is actually divided into Navy, Army, Air Force, and two other divisions. Each is highly independent and their IPv6 efforts are also different from each other. The Navy has started their IPv6 plans for FORCENet, their own global communications network, and they plan to adopt IPv6 for all their warships and such. The Army made a $4-billion contract with Lucent Technologies in order to upgrade their network to IPv6. The Air Force included $6 million in their budget in order to switch GBS, their TV broadcasting service for soldiers scattered worldwide, to network distribution via IPv6.
Furthermore, in order to support each of the above-mentioned activities, the MIL NIC, the division that manages network addresses and domains within the military, has already obtained an IPv6 address block, so they are ready to deal with the transition immediately.
While people can start using IPv6 anytime, one of the important matters when transitioning from IPv4 to IPv6, not just for the military but for others as well, is the issue of when IPv4 networks should be discontinued. For example, in Japan, it has been decided that, with terrestrial TV broadcasts transitioning from analog to digital, analog broadcasting will stop in 2011; however, there are many people who question whether this will actually happen.
When Mr. Lightman asked “When do you think that the US federal government will stop IPv4 routing in government related networks?”, one of the seminar participants said that it would probably be quite some time from now. However, Mr. Lightman estimates that the US federal government will discontinue IPv4 networks in 2017. To explain the reason, he showed the military’s transition roadmap. According to it, the IPv6 transition will be at its peak in 2010 and, at that point, they expect that they will be able to transition equipment and most applications. So, he assesses that it will take about 7 more years before IPv4 becomes completely unnecessary.
Now, let’s take a look at private companies. Since the beginning of 2006, there has been an increase in IPv6 activities among private companies. You can also see that movement by looking at the number of IPv6 addresses being obtained. Since the beginning of this year, more than 100 organizations obtained /32 address blocks; in other words, more than100 organizations plan to run an ISP business.
With regards to obtaining addresses, Mr. Lightman also talked about Google’s obtaining IPv6 addresses. According to him, Google obtained a /32 address block this year. The current address assignment policy does not in principle allow non-ISPs to obtain /32 address blocks. In other words, the reason for applying to the NIC for addresses has to be that the companies run, or will run, an ISP business.
However, Google announced that they obtained the IPv6 addresses for their own network within the company, not for running an ISP business, and this is against the /32 address assignment policy. In other words, when Google uses a /32 address block, they need to run an ISP business; if they don’t run an ISP business, they will have to return the /32 addresses.
Furthermore, he mentioned another action by Google; Google obtained the right to use dark fiber. Considering these two actions by Google, obtaining a /32 address block and a large amount of dark fiber, Mr. Lightman thinks that Google may start an ISP business soon.
At the end of his talk, Mr. Lightman said that although he thinks that there are probably many companies that want to do business with the US federal government, it is difficult to actually make it happen. But, when it comes to IPv6, there is a big chance for Japanese companies. He concluded his talk by appealing to Japanese companies, saying that we are all trying to spread IPv6, so we should work together in order to do business with the US federal government.
