Introducing a New Internet Protocol to Fix
Traffic Problems Faces Criticism, Apathy
By DAN GOODIN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
interactive.wsj.com
You thought upgrading the operating system of a single PC was a chore. Imagine the headaches involved in revamping millions of servers across the globe so they can better route traffic over the Internet.
It is a problem that engineers, government researchers and entrepreneurs have been grappling with for a decade. Many of those people will meet this week in Ottawa to update efforts to coordinate the global move to the upgrade, dubbed Internet Protocol version 6, or IPv6.
And in one milestone, Cisco Systems Inc. Monday plans to announce it is incorporating the upgrade into a wide array of its networking products. The San Jose, Calif., company's routing devices carry about 80% of the world's Internet traffic, so supporting IPv6 is an important step in disseminating the new technology.
But serious hurdles remain. Some critics say the new technology fails to fix some of the most pressing problems caused by the growth of the Internet. Besides those arguments, the new protocol faces apathy from a sea of corporations, schools and other groups connected to the Net, many of which are not convinced that there is a big enough problem with the current system to justify the huge cost of refurbishing virtually every network device in their organizations.
Still, just about everyone agrees about one looming issue: a potential shortage of user addresses.
The Internet protocol, or IP, system established sets of numbers that act as addresses for each computer linked to the global network. The current scheme accommodates about four billion unique numbers, a supply that could be exhausted in an age where every new cellphone, automobile or electrical socket might have its own Internet connection, and as more people in big countries such as China and India go online. Some experts predict the Web will run out of addresses in the next decade or so in part because the number of people connected to the Internet is expected to rise to one billion in 2005 from about 400 million now.
IPv6 uses many more digits in each number, so that it can supply an almost inexhaustible number of unique combinations. Besides adding exponentially more IP addresses, IPv6 offers other benefits, such as automatic configuring, which saves network administrators and computer users the hassle of plugging their IP numbers into e-mail programs, operating systems and network logs.
Still, a vocal cadre of engineers say that there are cheaper ways to work around the shortage, and that a classic chicken-and-egg problem will prevent companies from ever benefiting from their investments in IPv6.
"It's a phenomenally more painful solution," says Noel Chiappa, an independent software researcher and a longtime critic. Mr. Chiappa predicts IPv6 won't fly. "It only makes people's life better if 90% or more switch to it, and because we can't [even] get from 1% to 2%, we're never going to get to 90%."
The critics, in particular, point to flaws in directories known as routing tables that help servers on one part of the Net find addresses on other parts of the Net. The tables were never designed to handle large volumes of traffic, and face serious problems thanks to the exponential growth of the Net. IPv6 fails to alleviate this strain, the critics say, and also doesn't support some new fiber-optic technologies. "There are loose ends, and the faster we get experience with IPv6 in field use, the faster we will get them resolved," says Vint Cerf, an early Internet architect who is now a senior vice president at WorldCom Inc.
IPv6 has slowly been cropping up in U.S. companies' business offerings. Besides Cisco, computer maker Sun Microsystems Inc. is supporting IPv6 in its Solaris operating system. Microsoft Corp. currently offers only limited support for the standard, mostly in beta versions of some of its products. But the Seattle software maker says it expects full commercial support in 2002 and is "100% committed" to making its Windows operating systems, which run on about 80% of the world's computers, fully support IPv6.
"The thing we were waiting for a year ago is the thing we're waiting for now, which is when Microsoft will ship it in their operating system," says Scott Bradner, one of the directors at the Internet Engineering Task Force who helped develop IPv6.
The other catalyst expected to drive adoption of IPv6 is the deployment of a new generation of cellphone technology that is designed to better integrate Internet features. Because these devices need to be able to be identified no matter where in the world they are, they are expected to come with IPv6 built in. There's one other reason to believe IPv6 will be around in years to come, and that's because other countries, where IP addresses are not plentiful, are pushing hard for the overhaul. Currently, North America has 74% of the world's Internet Protocol addresses while Europe has 17% and Asia/Pacific has 9%.
"That kind of leaves the rest of the world out in the dark," says Mary Petrosky, an independent analyst in San Mateo, Calif. "The reality is [IPv6] is going to be implemented in other parts of the world, whether the United States thinks it's useful or not."
Write to Dan Goodin at dan.goodin@wsj.com |
