Experts concerned with U.S. technology lag

WASHINGTON, June 30 (UPI) -- The failure of the United States to adopt the next generation of Internet technology will put America at a distinct future economic disadvantage experts said at a House committee hearing Wednesday.

Speaking before the House Committee on Government Reform, several experts testified that the future version of the Internet - called IPv6 - would impact the future global competitiveness of American firms. Countries such as Japan, China and India are aggressively moving to adopt the technology, and, according to witness testimony, will be better positioned to accommodate the demands of an increasingly technologically- dependent world.

IPv6 - which is short for Internet Protocol Version 6 - has the capacity to accommodate an exponentially greater amount of unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. The current Internet Protocol - IPv4 - can support 4.3 billion unique IP addresses, which support "how and where information such as text, voice, and video moves across interconnected networks," according to a General Accounting Office report prepared for the event.

Witnesses such as Alex Lightman, president and CEO of the Internet company Charmed Technology, cited massive economic long-term consequences if the United States does not begin transitioning to IPv6 at a pace comparable to its Asian counterparts.

"The New Internet has the potential to create 10 million new American jobs and trillions of dollars in revenue for the U.S., but leadership is slipping away to other countries, and it will soon be difficult, if not impossible, to recover," testified Lightman.

Lightman told the committee that the $13 trillion American economy related to services, subscriptions, and transactions would be lost if the United States did not begin pursuing the IPv6 technology because nations such as Japan and India would have the capacity to meet the needs of the global market. The United States, according to Lightman, would lose "millions of jobs and market share across thousands of companies" because America would be left vulnerable to security flaws that exist with the current Internet.

Nations such as Japan and China made the transition to IPv6 out of necessity, as the old version of Internet would not have provided sufficient numbers of IP addresses to support the increasingly high-tech populations of these countries. Japan, for example, experienced Internet growth of 74 percent between the years 1999 and 2000, according to the e-Japan Priority Policy Program established by the Japanese government to oversee Japanese technological innovation.

The immediate threat of IP address shortages experienced in Asia do not exist in the United States. John Curran of the American Registry for Internet Numbers testified that the earliest date at which IPv4 addresses could no longer accommodate domestic need is 2018. Other estimates concerning exhaustion in other parts of the world range from 2019 to 2040, according to the RIPE Network Coordination Centre, a Dutch nonprofit organization that helps allocate regional Internet resources.

Because of the lack of urgency, the U.S. government has not rapidly moved to adopt IPv6. In fact, Wednesday's hearing was the first on the technology, initially developed in 1994. Twenty-one federal agencies lack plans detailing any sort of IPv6 transition, and 19 agencies have not inventoried the necessary software and equipment, according to the GAO report.

The exception to this lack of government involvement is the Department of Defense. The Defense Department plans to transition to IPv6 by 2008, according to George Wauer, speaking on behalf of the agency. According to Wauer's statement to the committee, the new technology would ensure more secure and efficient communications for future military and intelligence operations.

Despite the lack of an immediate domestic problem resulting from continuing IPv4 use, some at the hearing stressed urgency in the need to move towards IPv6 adoption.

Sharing the sentiment that America is falling behind is Thomas Bleha, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer based in Japan for eight years. In a recent article, Bleha argued that Japanese government leadership has resulted in its current position as a global leader on technology, whereas the United States under has lacked such leadership in recent years.

Bleha wrote in the May/June 2005 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, "The large broadband-user markets of Northeast Asia will attract the innovation the United States once enjoyed."

"Asians will have the first crack at developing the new commercial applications, products, services, and content of the high-speed-broadband era," Bleha added.

Despite pressure to pursue IPv6 adoption, there are concerns about moving forward, particularly related to the needs of security and a smooth transition for all government agencies.

"The overarching challenge facing us is ensuring continued uninterrupted functionality of Federal agencies during the transition while providing continued and improved information assurance," Karen Evans of the Office of Management and Budget told the committee.

According to a 2005 report by the United States Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT), "incomplete and inconsistent" IPv6 support can result in an operating system becoming vulnerable to a security breach in which information stored on a computer or network could be seriously compromised.

Witnesses at the hearing were unable to provide estimates regarding the cost of a nationwide transition to IPv6 technology, though all questioned acknowledged the cost would be significant.

Even with such lingering questions about the cost and security ramifications of the IPv6 transition, support for moving forward with IPv6 remains strong among those in the technology sector.

Stan Barber, an executive with the Internet service provider Verio Inc., told the committee, "We live on Internet time, and 'next generation' in that context means 'Now.'"