Get ready for yet another upgrade as next version of web takes hold.

The current Internet obsolete? Already?

Well, no, but a new version, with the inelegant name IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6), is starting to get serious attention. The Department of Defense uses it, the European Union is trying it. China, Japan and South Korea are clamoring for a worldwide upgrade.

If you've never heard of IPv6, it's not because you live in a cave. It's because you live in the United States. We are currently in the era known as IPv4. This next level, version 6, promises to be faster, sleeker and more powerful, and will offer better security--all the things to be expected from an upgraded version. It's just being driven by companies and governments overseas.

That may be about to change. The Office of Management and Budget has mandated that all federal agencies upgrade their systems to IPv6 by 2008--a move that several L.A.-area tech companies see as jump-starting U.S. development.

"We've seen more and more of our customers requesting IPv6 testing," said Frank Zajaczkowski, a spokesman for Calabasas-based Ixia Inc., which sells testing equipment for IP networks. "This is the pre-deployment stage."

The difference with the new protocol is in the amount of data that can be transferred at one time and the speed at which it can be processed.

Companies are testing routers and switches to make sure that they're compatible with IPv6 and can handle both Internet versions. For a while, systems will be tunneling both IPv4 and IPv6 through their routers, which may slow things down. Software and hardware must be upgraded as well.

Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP operating system, for example, is IPv6 enabled. "Workstations, hand-held devices, they have to be compatible," said Jim Jordan, director of business development for Yorba Linda-based Spirent Federal Systems Inc., the government-sales arm of Calabasas-based IP testing firm Spirent Communications Inc.

It can be as simple as an upgrade to the memory card within a device, Jordan explained, or upgrading software packages. But some companies may need what the industry terms a "forklift upgrade." "You come in with a forklift, pick up the rack of equipment you have now, take it out, and put in a new rack," Jordan said. "I'd say that's the major hindrance of enterprise moving to IPv6."

Aging system

To understand the potential benefits of the new protocol, imagine if communication were limited to whatever could fit on the back of a postcard. IPv6 is like creating a giant envelope that can carry thousands of postcards at a time--and the envelope is securely sealed.

"The system we have now was built in the early '80s," said Geof Lambert, chairman of the California IPv6 Task Force, a technology organization working to get California's metro areas on IPv6. "How many people are driving around in cars built in the '80s? In the tech world, it's just time for a new system."

The tools of IPv6 are the routers and switches that receive data from broadband lines, unscramble it and deliver it to a computer, cell phone, or hand-held device.

"Whether the data comes through a cable, fiber optic line or if it comes from the sky with a satellite or a cell phone connection is immaterial--it's the device that receives it that needs to make sense of it," Lambert said.

It's the difference of being able to continue a cell phone conversation in an elevator, on a train or down into a parking garage.

"If we had sensors affixed to all the levees in New Orleans communicating with satellites that were connected to first-responders ..." imagined Alex Lightman, chief executive of Santa Monica-based Innofone.com Inc., an IPv6 education and consulting firm. He insists that IPv6 can handle rich media in a way the current system can't. "The current IPv4 can barely handle html and blogs," Lightman said.

IPv6 uses a longer string of numbers for each IP address. That allows for more people, computers and other devices to log on. Though the numbers are mind-boggling--IPv4's configuration allows for 4.3 billion Internet addresses--the addresses are running out, especially in India and China.

Cisco Systems Inc. published a recent report projecting that IPv4 addresses will run out in the next four years. "The recent consumption rates will not be sustainable from the central pool beyond this decade," wrote Tony Hain in the Cisco report. "Organizations would be wise to start the process of planning for an IPv6 deployment now."

Running out of space

Space on the Internet is assigned by Marina del Rey-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a non-profit group established in 1998 to oversee the management of the Internet. Its board hails from three continents, and it works with international treaty organizations to assign and organize addresses and domain names like .edu and .org.

Trouble is, China was allocated about 9 percent of available IPv4 addresses, though it has about half the world's population. The adoption rate of the Internet in China last year was "on a scale that we have never experienced," said Harvey Newman, professor of physics at CalTech and a leader in IPv6 research. "We are running out of IPv4 space, but I don't think it's quite the structural problem here that it is in China."

Already, there are gripes that the U.S. is lagging other parts of the world in adoption of IPv6 technology. "In the global realm of competition, once leadership in Internet services and applications is lost, it will be difficult for U.S. application developers to regain," Hain wrote in an open letter to the Commerce Department.

Still, manufacturers like Cisco and Juniper Networks Inc. are building IPv6 capability into their routers. There will be several years of transition where systems will run both IPv4 and IPv6, and the routers need to be able to handle both.

San Francisco-based construction giant Bechtel Group Inc. has announced that it is targeting 2008 for a complete conversion to IPv6. The company is even distributing baseball hats with an "IPv6 Ready" logo.

But it's overseas, especially Asia, where most of the work is happening. "Japan has really taken the lead in putting IPv6 in place throughout their networks because they needed tons more IP addresses than were available in IPv4," said Jordan. (Spirent counts NTT Corp., Japan's national telecom company and ISP, as a client.)

And the South Korean government announced that it has already reserved several trillion addresses on IPv6. But not to worry, IPv6 has enough space for 3.4 x 1038 addresses: that's 34 with 37 zeros after it--practically limitless. "Well, there is a limit," said Deborah Williams-Hedges, communications coordinator for CalTech, "but it's such a large number that most people cannot comprehend it."

The New Internet

BENEFITS

* Increased address space

* Improved routing of data

* More wireless features

* Better security

CHALLENGES

* Hardware and software upgrades

* High cost

* Network slowdowns during transition

* Security risks during transition