An article in InfoWorld today quotes IPv6 experts calling for organizations to adopt the next generation Internet protocol, which will provide more Internet addresses and with it the promise for new applications. From the article:

The telecommunications industry is going through "a period of grief" over the end of IPv4 (IP version 4), said Tony Hain, IPv6 technical leader for Cisco Systems. "Most people in the world are still in a state of denial" about upgrading to IPv6. "No one will ask for IPv6 until they run out of IPv4 addresses," he said.

Agencies are facing a June deadline – a mandate issued by the Office of Management and Budget – to make their network backbones IPv6 compliant. It looks like most will meet the deadline, but whether agencies will develop applications that take advantage of IPv6 is the question.

That's the gist of an upcoming cover story in the May 1 issue of Government Executive magazine. Look for it soon. Here's a snippet:

The questions now are whether and how quickly federal agencies will move beyond the OMB mandate and begin running IPv6. Agencies are “in front of IPv6, fueled by the OMB mandate,” says Paul Girardi, director of engineering for AT&T Government Solutions. “The trick for feds is not to lose ground. They need to continue to keep IPv6 in their planning and buy IPv6 as they replace things for obsolescence. They need to pick a couple [of IPv6] applications they want to focus on and do some cost-benefit analysis around those.”

The risk for federal agencies that don’t take advantage of IPv6 is they “will become technologically stagnant,” says Jerry Edgerton, chief executive officer of Command Information, a Herndon, Va., provider of IPv6 services to carriers, enterprises and governments. Edgerton warns that federal agencies have three years at most to transition to production-quality IPv6 before they fall behind other nations. “If you’re going to do collaboration and use wireless devices and secure them on your network, you need IPv6,” he says.