FEDERAL EXECUTIVE FORUM TRANSCRIPT

IPv6

Broadcast May 3, 2007 on www.FederalNewsRadio.com and WFED 1050 AM Washington, DC

FEF Host

Jim Flyzik, The Flyzik Group

FEF Panel

John McManus, Deputy Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology Officer,  Department of Commerce

Peter Tseronis, Network Services for the Office of the Chief Information Officer, Department of Education

Charlie Wisecarver, Deputy CIO, Department of State

Fred Schobert Networx Program Manager, GSA

David West, Director, Field Operations Federal Center of Excellence, CISCO

Tom Patterson, CEO & President, Command Information

 JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

During today’s show we will discuss the critical issues facing government and industry leaders as we evolve and federation computer technology. More specifically we will discuss the need to convert from today’s environment to Internet Protocol version 6. The challenges of conversion and the vision for significantly improved government services in the future. We will also discuss progress made in the past year since our first show on the subject.

Let’s get right into the issues. I’d like to start today’s show; we had a show on the same subject a year ago. I thought we’d kick this one off today by talking a little bit about progress made during the past year and some of the significant events that have occurred. Let’s start with John McManus, John can you give us some updates on progress being made towards your move to IPv6?

JOHN MCMANUS, COMMERCE

I sure can Jim. When we got together a year ago we were really in the early stages of moving out on IPv6 and over the last year we’ve really been focusing on communications, planning, and relationship building. We’ve spent a lot of time out making sure that there’s a clear scope for the federal transition, that each of the agencies is getting the fundamental steps of their planning done so that we are working towards common success criteria and a common goal. And we’ve been doing a lot of outreach across the federal government to build the relationships to allow the smaller agencies to leverage the strength and experience of the larger agencies. We’ve also spent a lot of time focusing on the opportunity and working to get people to understand that there really is a long transition. This is a part of our normal network evolution and that we need to look past just June of 2008 when we will bring IPv6 onto our core network and start communicating those new capabilities into our customer community so that they can start developing programs and projects that leverage those. So in the past year we’ve really been focused on communications, planning, and then getting the message out on those new capabilities and I think we’ve really started to see a strong uptake in the user community for ways that they now envision IPv6 adding value to them.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

I agree with you John. A year ago we were like what is IPv6, why do we have to do it and now we are the dialogue’s changed quite a bit too all the neat things we are going to be able to do. Pete Tseronis your name has been associated with IPv6 as a leader government wide. Tell us what you are up to in the last year and progress that you are making at Education as well as government wide.

PETER TSERONIS, EDUCATION

Thanks. A year ago I was not serving as a co-chair and since then John has asked me to join the team. So it’s been a very collaborative learning and I think an awesome experience from the standpoint of the federal government taking charge and working with John has been great. Just to go off what John has been saying, this June 30, 2008 date a year ago seemed a long way off. And there were a lot of early milestones and requirements that were put on agencies by way of memos and so forth. And it was a lot of action really quick and I like to think that since then, since the last time we chatted, this is kind of that lull period. OK we’ve got these early deliverables; we’ve got time to get to June 30, 2008.

Well it’s a year later and we’ve got a lot of work to do, we’ve got the communications piece for collaborating with DOD a little more closely, we’re trying to show that there’s a unified front from the federal government perspective, that it’s not the DOD IPv6 transition, but it’s the US government transition. We are one unified team. This isn’t Y2K, as John pointed out, there’s a light beyond June 30 and we may be doing this for many, many years and hopefully it will be more and more exciting.

And really from the standpoint of the stakeholders in this, to my right is Dave West and he is representing the vendor community and Tom is next to him, we are trying to synergize with the vendor community and not just treat this as another government mandate. But really look at it beyond the fact that it is some technical plumbing infrastructure perspective. This is an opportunity for the federal government to look and say how do I want my network to look in the future?

What can I do to modernize it and take advantage of this opportunity versus looking at it as this is something that we have to do and then it’s going to be over with. It’s really laying the foundation for an infrastructure to do these really neat things that we’ll probably be talking about a little later.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Absolutely, we’ll definitely come back and talk about some visions for the future and some of the neat things we will be doing. David over at Cisco, Pete mentioned working with industry and I would imagine Cisco, knowing the nature of your business that this has to be a major priority at Cisco systems. Can you give us some idea of what you have been doing the past year to move the government forward?

DAVID WEST, CISCO

 Thanks Jim. At Cisco we are committed to the federal government and to our customers around the globe in helping them in their integration to IPv6. IPv6 is a protocol. What really makes it interesting is the applications and services that will be enabled as a result of the protocol.

Our focus this year has been on integration services, phase planning on how we help government customers make this transition. Focus on development priorities, on what we need to phase when so as the government and other customers around the globe make this transition to IPv6, that we provide the product and solutions ready to go to support where they want to go. Transition architectures, planning assessment, determining how we need to move forward is probably the most important aspect of where we are right now.

I think the next 18 months will really be about not transitioning capabilities to IPv6 but really looking at what needs to occur, what needs to happen first and how we bring forward integrated services and next generation capabilities to IPv6, but doing the planning now.

So our focus has been working closely with Pete Tseronis, with government to really do a consortium between government and industry to determine the right steps, the necessary processes for moving to IPv6.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Yes, that government industry partnership I think is critical. I think at least from what we’ve been observing it looks like industry and government are stepping up and working this one together and that’s a real nice model. Charlie Wisecarver over at the Department of State, I guess State has some unique challenges too with overseas issues and coordination of what’s going on here. Charlie, can you give us a little bit about your role there and progress that you are making over at the State Department?

CHARLIE WISECARVER, STATE DEPARTMENT

Thanks Jim. As Dave suggested, we’ve been very active in the participation of the public/private partnerships, working with the vendors out there and understanding what products are going to be available and when they are going to roll. We’ve been doing a watching, studying and planning role right now and we’ve been working on that very hard over the last year. We are watching the market place drivers.

We are also looking beyond the IPv6 and how that’s done in some of our lab testing and what are going to be the next practices and it’s very, very important to the Department of State. We have diplomats in over 260 missions around the world so we see this as a very exciting opportunity and it’s really going to enable our diplomats in their work.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

 Good. We’ll hopefully get back and talk a little bit more about some of these enabling services as we move on. Tom Patterson, CEO at Command Information.

Tom, can you give us a bit about your role in IPv6 and the kinds of things that you have been doing and what’s been on your list the last year?

TOM PATTERSON, COMMAND INFORMATION

Thanks. Command Information is the largest pure IPv6 solutions company in America and it’s not just federal it’s commercial as well. So our last year has just been wonderful. I think the best way to sum it up has really been the questions that our customers have been asking us.

A year ago most of the questions were what and why and now they are how and ??   and that’s a great thing for 2007 and beyond. They want to know how do I do this, how do I take advantage of this and where’s the benefit? The discussion last year was on the mandate and I think this year it’s on the mission and really shifting that whole focus. There’s a reason that we have this mandate. There’s a reason that government and the private sector have gotten together behind this and there are a lot of benefits out there. Awareness is up, education is up.

At Command Information we’ve launched an education center, it’s a hands on environment that was so successful with the one classroom we had that we’ve now built three remote classrooms that travel around the country just to set up, because when you do it, when you touch it and feel it, it’s so much different than reading it in a book. And as people are coming through they are going back to their agencies and really looking at what’s possible out there now.

And the answer is there’s a lot possible just in terms of activity and things that are happening now we have seen every month in 2007 has out spent the entire year in 2006.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

 Wow, exciting stuff. I like the fact that the dialogue has changed over the year. It has changed from technical issues to these are solutions. It brings it home that this is something that will … and I think it’s a lot easier to have a dialogue with chief executives or senior managers when you are talking about the neat things you can do as opposed to we need to change this protocol inside our switches. It works a little bit more.

Fred Schobert over at GSA, at GSA we’ve got the networks contracts awarded now and I guess Fred when people think about programs like this that take on a centralized approach or an enterprise wide approach where you need coordination across government, GSA is usually the first place you look as playing a key role in that. Can you give us a sense of what you guys are doing over at GSA and what’s gone on for the past year on this particular issue?

FRED SCHOBERT, GSA

 Sure can Jim, thanks. At GSA we’ve are in a little bit of a different position. For example on the networks program we had to deal with IPv6 we had to figure out how we were going to specify in the requests for proposals to industry that have now been awarded. And what we did is IPv6 is clearly specified as a requirement in the networks programs and we put specs and interfaces in there that contractors have to be able to meet and deal with from a backbone standpoint.

The good news I think for agencies is that we also asked for a narrative response from all the offers at that time on efforts universal and enterprise and we pretty much know what they are doing from a backbone standpoint to implement it.

The next step really that GSA is looking at is how to better support our agency customers in terms of certification and testing, training, those kinds of things and we are looking right now what to do to stand up a leadership role to be able to support our customers.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Terrific. I look forward to hearing about that too. We’ve got a lot to talk about here today. I’d like to shift the subject just slightly over to some of the key challenges. Things that when you go to work every day and you are thinking about this issue. The hurdles you need to get over, the big challenges in front of you. Is it money, is it culture, is it coordination, is it technical issues? What are some of these big challenges? Let’s start with industry this time.

David West at Cisco, what do you think are some of the biggest challenges we need to overcome in order to move forward and get out in front of this?

DAVID WEST, CISCO

I think what’s most important about the deadline is that it got government moving. I think people looked at the deadline and thought that everything needed to be IPv6 capable by the deadline, that government agencies would have transitioned by the deadline, when in reality, all it did was energize the government to start planning and preparing for this transition.

There is still a lot of work to do from the product perspective, from a solution perspective, education within the government, there’s absolutely work that needs to be done in terms of preparing government agencies and entities for making this transition their own internal preparations. Preparation needs to be done to make sure that any move towards any new protocol doesn’t impact day to day operations.

So all of the things that need to occur to make sure that the government is successful in this transition to IPv6 will really occur over the next 24 to 36 months. In my opinion.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

That seamless transition you are talking about running dual stacks, IPv4 and IPv6 at the same time for a period of time? Is that how you see that going out?

DAVID WEST, CISCO

It could be that, it could be something else. I think as government looks and agencies look as what services they want to provide, what services they want to enable for IPv6 they may take different approaches on how they enable those services. How they take advantage of what that protocol offers.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Tom Patterson at Command Information? Challenges? What sort of challenges do you see ahead here?

TOM PATTERSON, COMMAND INFORMATION

The same challenge from last year still applies here and that is education. The more people that understand their day job, the more that they understand the new capabilities that are in the internet that they already have, the less frightened they are of the change and some of the key reasons that were bandied about last year are really falling by the wayside.

There’s no v6 to buy so you don’t have to go out and get a line item for a big v6 thing. You are already buying routers, you are already buying computers, you are already buying the phones, you just need to specify as GSA networks did, that when you buy these services they should support the new versions of the internet. So that has really taken that big fear away. Education then unlocks the art of the possible. What can I do with this? I run a supply chain, what do I care about the jumbo grams (sounds like) and  these things.

In reality if you talk to them, if you educate about what they do in their language, and that’s what our whole series of training exercises do, is talk about supply chains, talk about telework, talk about cars and mobile and all these things that the government lives off of, that run our government. If you talk about how it affects that, then they tend to pick it right up. So it’s really education that is the biggest….

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Sounds exciting. I think I’m going to want to take your training class. Now I want to hear the challenges from the point of view of our government guests also.

Short break

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

When we went to break, we were discussing some of the challenges and we heard from our industry panelists what some of those challenges are from their perspective. Let’s hear from our government panelists. Fred what are some of the biggest challenges that you believe you are facing and need to overcome in order to get where you want to get with IPv6?

FRED SCHOBERT, GSA

In networks, I think we have a pretty good network strategy, that’s all built in to the fixed pricing from the services that are delivered. But I think right now the real challenges at the premises base level of the network I think we have to work with our agencies, we have challenges in terms of training, we have challenges in terms of service support. At GSA we certainly know the challenges of transition. There will be transition challenges for our agency customers we are going to have to address and work with them on. And then basic overall training. One of the things we need to do also is become more crystal clear I believe at the user level on what the benefits for IPv6 are. The agencies are going to have a lot of choices regarding transition. You mentioned one of them, dual stat.

Whether or not to go in that direction or whether perhaps to make more significant investments to develop a better solution. But I have to think those investments will be based on their understanding of what the ultimate benefits will be. So I think as a group and as an industry government team we need to become clearer on exactly what are the benefits for making that investment.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

That’s great. I think we’ll look forward to some best practices and take a look agency by agency over time. Who knows, maybe OMB will even have a score card. We’ll see where that all goes. Charlie Wisecarver, at the Department of State, what do you see as some key challenges when you go to work each day that face you in moving forward in this area?

CHARLIE WISECARVER, STATE DEPARTMENT

Well Jim clearly for the Department of State it’s a funding question. There are competing requirements out there. To become IPv6 compliant by June 2008 will require a significant amount of funding and if you look at how we are spread throughout the world that also presents some challenges with the roll out. You know I think it can be helped easily with a lot of cost product (sounds like) availabilities. As that further comes along it makes it a much easier sell for me to get the funding.

Right now to try to sell IPv6 to senior executives in the State Department, it’s not sexy, there’s nothing really there for them to grab on to. They’d much rather fund legacy programs or other types of activities. I think that the good news is, as more and more cost (sounds like) products become available, that’s going to make it a much easier sell. Folks will begin to realize how important it is to transition to IPv6.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

I agree with you completely. In fact we did a round table breakfast on this with several of you here and we coined this idea of “Imagine This” theme. You’ve got to think about imagining things in the future. Hopefully we will close the show today by trying to imagine some things in the future that perhaps take on a sexier role so to speak in terms of getting management attention. Pete, Department of Education as well as some of your government wide responsibilities, what are the challenges in front of you?

PETER TSERONIS, EDUCATION

I would say that there’s about, well there’s many. But I try to reduce it down to approximately 4. Culturally people know what IPv6 is today. I can walk around, I’m the IPv6 guy at Education. I get the forwarded emails or what have you and the phone calls. People at least are talking about it. A year ago it was, what? And you say internet is really known as IPv4 and people say what? Now I get it, IPv6 is the next generation. So culturally there’s a challenge there but I’m seeing that pacifying because it’s been around for a while.

Money. It’s a funding issue as Charlie points out but as OMB said, it’s the opportunity to look at your refresh dollars and say hey look at your network does it need to be refreshed? Will you refresh it?  Put that procedure, that process in place. You still may not get the money or the funding but at least you can build a business case for getting investments to upgrade your network and by the way you might as well buy a procure an IPv6 compliant product.

Policies, we are in the midst of defining some acquisition policies, testing policies, accreditation policies. We are working with the vendor community, we are meeting herewith the vendors in the next couple of weeks at several public forum and we are going to be talking about those things. Those have to be ironed out before we go and buy a product and say hey I want this device and I want to make sure it’s an IPv6 compliant router, or switch, or firewall. If I’m a customer in the federal government, I’m going to Cisco saying hey I want an IPv6 product. Well I want them to say OK on this approved product list or what have you, these are the products that you can purchase. So just to say I want everything IPv6 compliant or the application of the hardware that exists today. We are still defining the regulations around creating something that can be a pick and choose type of scenario.

And lastly it’s really the thinking out of the box challenge. I think as Charlie pointed out and I’ve stressed, it’s build on promise. Way back in the day, I’ll talk a little bit about this in the imagine this segment, it really comes down to you have to think outside of what you want to be doing with this in the future and how you want to be doing it and make the assumption that IPv6 infrastructure is going to enable that. We didn’t think about that when the internet first popped up, we just thought it was cool to surf the net. Now we are saying there’s going to be a new infrastructure you will be able to do more things like auto configuration, recovery, etc., etc. But people are a little bit hesitant because people are well what we have today isn’t broken, so don’t try to fix it.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

That’s a good point. We will continue to hear that. Why are we fixing something that is works today? As opposed to thinking about advanced capabilities of the future. John, you’ve been around this issue for some time too and are seen as a leader across government. What are some of the big challenges in front of you John?

JOHN MCMANUS, COMMERCE

I think the big challenge, this is a day to day challenge, is to get everyone to understand that we need to be thinking about the long term. Early on we needed to understand IPv6. We shouldn’t be selling IPv6. We need to be selling the capabilities that IPv6 brings to our mission. That really is a very large challenge because when you go in to talk to senior leadership, when we did the network evolution at NASA, as we are doing our network evolution at the Department of Commerce, I don’t mention IPv6 other than to say our gear will be compliant with the mandate. I talked about how is this going to enable the Department of Commerce, NOAH, the National Weather Service, to provide better services to the citizens or to provide better capability to our internal users.

We can’t focus on the protocol itself. We have to remember that protocol is bringing new capability and if we talk about just the protocol, if we talk about it like the whole thing is for IPv6, not what it enables, we go into senior leadership who did not understand that there was an IPv4. So we’ve just pointed out to them that hey there’s this really important thing that you didn’t know.

It doesn’t resonate well. And I’m now going to go through a 64 bit header bit by bit to pound into your brain why this is better. No. The messaging has to really be focused on enabling new capabilities that allow us to do new things for the citizens and new things for our users.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

 That dialogue with the chief executives and the CEOs and agency heads is so important and you are right, we are learning over the years. Another area where development is the area of security and cyber security where it’s sometimes hard to articulate the importance. Before that I’d like to throw a question out for the group here around that.

It seems like in the past with all new technologies come new vulnerabilities and often times, this is Jim’s opinion, but often times new technologies hit the market and then we are catching up later trying to get the security fixes in place because the so called bad guys out there find ways to exploit new technologies.

There are some concerns today about a digital Pearl Harbor or a terrorist attack taking down networks, attacking networks. Should IPv6, is that going to improve security, or do we have concerns about security? I’m curious about how the panelists would address that issue. Let’s start with Tom of Command Information. Tom have you given thought to that issue right of potential vulnerabilities with new capabilities?

TOM PATTERSON, COMMAND INFORMATION

 Keep in mind that the internet we use today, and we just call it the internet. We don’t know what version number it is and no one really cares, that was designed in the ‘70s, and the concept was you had to be a trusted person before you were allowed to connect at a university or a research division or something like that. The concept of the general person coming along and connecting to the internet wasn’t part of the design.

So all the security that we’ve got now is added on. And we’ve actually got a really good security standard now called IPSec. The problem is not enough people use it. The banks use it for very high volume transactions, maybe State will use it for a top secret cable or something. But the rank and file people, it’s not being used to protect their credit cards, to safeguard their privacy and it can be.

So when IP version 6 came out and started to be thought of as the next generation, leave everything old still working, but let’s see what we need to fix. One of  the first things that we fixed was let’s take whatever we know how to do really well, that is IPSec, the best security that we know how to do, make that default to the on position instead of an off position. So that someone will be able to, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist in order to use good security now.

However that’s not the whole thing and it’s certainly no security silver bullet. It’s also when WiFis came out. If you remember that a lot of CIOs said we don’t have a WiFi problem because we don’t allow it. And then there were all these chalk marks outside their building saying this is where you get free WiFi access. Because people were just putting it in because it’s easy. That is possible now with IPv6 but you can’t just ignore it. And just outlaw it in your organization because it’s built into Apple, it’s built into Windows XP, it’s built into half the cell phones you are buying today. And some people are going to turn it on.

So you need to be addressing the security implications. Security changes absolutely if you address it on a proactive basis, it changes for the better.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

John, how about with the government, does the government have a group looking at security implications of an IPv6 world?

JOHN MCMANUS, COMMERCE

Yes, there’s a lot of work going on looking at security in the IPv6 world. There’s a lot of groups going on looking at security in the services that we provide today. And I think that Tom made a critical point. Those risks exist today. When you go and look at when IPv4 was designed, it has matured. Security has been bolted on to IPv4. In  IPv6 we’ve had the opportunity to actually design that in.

Now, that said, as you pointed out, we you deploy a new technology there usually is a period of increased risk. And that risk comes from the simple fact that no matter what testing you do in the lab, and I think we do test very thoroughly, when you hit the wild, you hit some situations that you have not tested for.

So one of the key things that we are doing now is working together as a community, there’s a working group that’s a part of the IPv6 working group, we are doing outreach into the DOD, outreach into all the carriers and equipment providers to start testing that equipment in a live environment on test networks so that when we go live we are sure that we are achieving at least the level of security, if not better, than we have in the networks we have today.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

It’s good to see some proactive thinking in this area. I think in the past we’ve learned some lessons the hard way when we didn’t have that proactive thinking. Pete, can you add to that?

PETER TSERONIS, EDUCATION

I just wanted to add that when you think of security regardless of the internet protocol, you think of confidentiality, you think of integrity and authentication. CIA. And IPv6 isn’t going to be the panacea that says I’m going to take care of your mis-configured server, your poorly designed application, your poorly protected internet sites. You need to have the skills to implement and maintain.

We all know that, that’s easier said than done. You have some internet engineers and systems engineers’ folks out there who are like bring it on, I can support IPv4 today, I can support IPv6 in the future. You have others who are running for the foothills saying we don’t need to go there. But at the end of the day, you still have to maintain your security in such a way that, whether it’s IP stack or some other method, you are still going to have to protect it. So it’s not that it’s more secure, it just isn’t going to be less secure. You still have to maintain those policies in your network.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

And your key point is that you have to look at that holistically, you can’t just look at the protocol per se. You’ve got to look at the whole system that you are implementing and all the necessary vulnerabilities. Dave, at Cisco, are you doing some looking at that security question? I would think that bread and butter for you guys to make sure that those issues are addressed.

DAVID WEST, CISCO

Yes, absolutely. You know a move to anything new, any new capability, produces threats and risk.  But if you do proper planning, validation, testing, a phased implementation of how you are going to introduce something new, you minimize those risks. And so as we look at and as we work with government, specifically the standards bodies, the testing entities to look at what needs to happen around security, one of the things that we are trying to make sure occurs is that as they make this transition, and they integrate this new service, they do it well thought out. Where if you had to introduce a new operating system or a new application, there’s risks in that.

If you are introducing IPv6, there are going to be risks in that. What’s more interesting I think in terms of security, is the new application services that will be enabled as a result of the protocol. Tom mentioned IPSec. We’ve got now a very large address face where many devices can have addresses. That introduces a potential security risk but again with proper planning, with consideration of what needs to happen from the vendor community in testing and validation, you could minimize those risks and really start to take advantage of what the protocol offers.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

The theme that I am hearing is the process and procedures to do the risk analysis and to manage risk, is what’s necessary to be up front.

Break

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

When we went to break we were talking security and I’d like to finish hearing from our other panelists their thoughts on that question around security and then we are going to shift over and start talking about the future and some of the things that we will be able to do in an IPv6 world that we can’t do today. Sort of that vision or imagine this segment. Fred, at GSA do you have a group there that is looking at security implications in the IPv6 world?

FRED SCHOBERT, GSA

Right now we are looking at possibly setting up such a group. We fully realize that with IPv6 there’s a lot of promise with security but we realize there’s a lot of work that remains to be done to be able to implement it with the agencies. When we talk with the agencies about IPv6 we are talking about things like IPSec but you are also talking about encryption and if you think about it, the security standards need to be defined, they need to be precise. The information security tools that the agencies will use need to be developed and they need to be there.

They are probably going into network monitoring and management facility overall to monitor a network. FISMA guidance needs to be considered because right now we have to go through certification and accreditation and if there are any holes we won’t be able to do anything. And finally we need to take a look at what we need to do in the application area to best support the IPv6 and what applications are required.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great. Charlie, how about at State? You have some unique issues there, with security of your own systems but so much work that goes on internationally. You’ve got that other whole set of issues that need to be looked at. How are you approaching that?

CHARLIE WISECARVER, STATE DEPARTMENT

Well Jim we do have those problems and we do take security very, very seriously. I think IPv6 is going to introduce some new security concerns but ultimately we will be better off as we become smarter about this and adjust our policies and procedures. The denial of service possibilities is always a very, very serious concern for us as so much of our work is done through the internet. I think this can all be mitigated through some monitoring tools. The intrusion detection system, we haven’t heard too much about those types of tools that will help us identify those intrusion sets and how we can mitigate this quickly.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Great. What I’d like to do now is kind of have some fun with the show in a way of thinking about the future. What are some services or things we will be doing in the future that we can’t do today. What are some neat things that we will see in the IPv6 world that will improve customer service and improve the way our government is able to meet the needs of its customers. Let’s work our way starting with Fred. Fred, give us some ideas or some visions for the future, some neat stuff that you think that is out there that will really be the, things that will make people embrace IPv6 and say, yes, that is something I need to do.

FRED SCHOBERT, GSA

When you really look at what is our overall goal, well it’s to have a seamless, secure, interoperable government. What does that mean and how does IPv6 help? Well the benefits of IPv6 could be things like increased operational efficiency, improved security we’ve talked about, but also I think 2 of the keys are the mobility features it gives you with the additional addresses and the address auto configuration. So now you can have mobile platforms like police cars or soldiers in the field. If you think about things like friendly fire, it’s new ways to give everybody an IP address and make them a known, make even on a battle field they can automatically be  reconfigured in terms of the IP address to know where people are and people can certainly communicate with each other real time.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Terrific. Tom, I certainly read about this smart homes and smart appliances and how my alarm clock is going to wake me up and give me directions to work by monitoring the internet and telling me where the traffic delays are. Is that ?

TOM PATTERSON, COMMAND INFORMATION

You’ve got to forget about that ?? refrigerator. It’s held us back for too long. That’s not why we are doing this, that’s not why the government has a mandate. I spent the week of Katrina, the week the levee broke in New Orleans and it was a mess. And it was a mess not because there weren’t a lot of good people there who wanted to help that had lots of expensive equipment. It was a mess because that equipment couldn’t communicate without some central office back home too.

The central point. There was no central office because power was down. Communications were down. Yet all these fire engines were there, ambulances were there, police cars were there from all over the country all wanting to help. Nobody knew where the water was high and where the water was low and where the power was on and where there was an old lady that needed to be rescued. That has changed now. When I’m talking about 2008 or 2010 or some amorphous future, Command Information worked with Cisco and we built a solution for first responders so that with existing equipment that’s already v6 capable, phones, v6 capable computers, when a fire truck and a police car that have never met each other before show up at a disaster and want to help they will automatically do that ?? discovery thing that we talked about and auto configurations that we talked about.

It’s not just a technical thing, what it means is that the police car can start to share sensor data with the fire engine. Even if they’ve never met each other before and will never see each other again. Right then and there they can network together and they can work to save lives. You can’t do that with the old internet. You can do it with today’s internet. That means 2007.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

 Wow. I’d like to hear a lot more about that. I’ve been dealing with this interoperability question for first responders probably for 20 years now. It’s one I was in the middle of when I was in government and now I find myself in the middle of again heading up a committee on interoperability and we are really trying to get over that issue and that debate, so there’s some exciting stuff there if we can solve that interoperability issue down at that first responder level. Charlie, if Condoleezza Rice was talking to you and asked you what is some neat stuff that we are going to be able to do over here with IPv6, how would you answer that question?

CHARLIE WISECARVER, STATE DEPARTMENT

 One of our specific goals at the Department of State is to support diplomats on the move and Secretary Rice has articulated a policy of transformational diplomacy. This is taking the diplomat beyond the traditional brick and mortar facilities and putting them out there with the people.

They have to be mobile. Now we’ve been able to do a certain amount of that with IPv4 but it’s really just not scalable. So that’s what we look forward to with IPv6. We are going to be able to take this to a much greater stage and have that diplomat, whether it be bilateral talks or out visiting an aid mission or they are in Santa Domingo or if they are in Bucharest or in Baghdad, we are going to be able to extend the tools and information that they need to make the right policy decisions and to support US policy and diplomacy overseas.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Terrific. Dave West, Cisco sales people walk into an agency and they are going to talk to the senior leaders in that agency and they say we are going to do IPv6 and here are the things you will be able to do. What are the things that they are going to be able to do that are going to have those agency decision makers say oh boy we really need to do this?

DAVID WEST, CISCO

I think that’s probably the most important part of the discussion. It’s really about how v6 as a protocol will enable next generation services. 10 years ago we couldn’t imagine what we can do today on a cell phone. Mobility services, telephony, video. And I don’t think we can really imagine 10 years from now what v6 applications will be out there.

But imagine an agency’s inventory of appliances and vehicles on line for logistics management, asset awareness, power reduction, location services, maintenance scheduling to help reduce operating costs, utility centers monitor from data locations where heating and cooling systems adjust in real time, decreased power consumption, associated costs, healthy environment, centrally controlled monitoring of heating and ventilation and air conditioning, all of that stuff is possible.

Imagine first responders that quickly go to a building that are able to download the blueprints of that building, understand the status of the building, look at the building material, know what’s happening, understand the toxicity in the building. Imagine EMT folks walk in, police, FBI, other folks that want to communicate in that same first responder incident to be able to share information, to be able to collaborate seamlessly. Imagine as these first responders evacuate people to be able to send back critical information so that emergency response personnel, hospitals can react to that first responder in that crisis. That’s the vision of v6. To be able to do all those things and so much more.

In industry think about mergers and acquisitions where companies come together and they take months and years to try to bring systems together. Imagine having v6 addresses on all these devices and as these mergers and acquisitions happen these companies can come together and share information seamlessly.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Wow. That’s exciting stuff and if we had time I could come back and hit you with a harder question like: When will we see some of these things actually happen? It’s hard, I think we have an issue of awareness to talk to the public to talk and let them know that all these things are going to be enabled in a v6 world. Pete, you’ve been working this issue for quite some time and I know you’ve thought about this issue. Give us some ideas and your vision of things that we’ll be doing in the future that we can’t do today.

PETER TSERONIS, EDUCATION

 I think the theme through this, and it’s probably evident for most folks, is mobility. We’ve had a taste for the last couple of years of what a cell phone did in its origination state to what it can do today. We know about hot spots. But at the end of the day IPv6 is really about 340 trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion addresses.

There were 4.3 billion addresses the first time around. We all know an address goes on a device so that it can communicate. So with more devices being able to communicate, whether it’s a mobility thing or just your refrigerator or your watch or the bullet on the soldier’s vest. More devices, more communication, more opportunity for data. Global internet mobility, always on IT availability. Mobile ad hoc networking, new methods for communicating whether it’s through a service or an application.

That’s what it’s about.

Yes, there needs to be engineered applications to make these addresses work most efficiently. And that’s the promise, that’s the potential. The foundation is there, the technology is there. We all know that Microsoft, Cisco and other vendors are going to come out with new products, building on what was already there. Going to leverage what IPv4 was all about, it will make IPv6 hopefully better. We want to scale the internet, it’s been 30 years.

From an educational standpoint, thinking about OK what are we going to do with those devices, that’s when we get creative. In the education community we talk about communicating with the outside world. Today we go into buildings, typically we use the internet a lot more but I remember back in school I was going to the library and doing card catalogue searches, there was no internet and I was typing on a centralized computer facility that was talking to a mainframe.

In grad school 10 years later I basically went to school on line. From a collaboration standpoint why not communicate and take a class in France over your BlackBerry if you have multitask enabled for example and you want to video conference end to end and know that it’s secure. From a content perspective, again that will be an out growth. If we can collaborate more effectively and efficiently there’s going to be more content out there for us to deal with. Assessment and evaluation student teacher relationships. A lot of people think that if you are not in school, are not in front of a chalk board you are not learning. Sometimes you want that feedback. Why do people go to big schools versus small schools?

I was always told go to a smaller school, there will be better teacher student interaction, there will be smaller classes and you will learn more effectively. On my first day in one of my first classes I had 80 or 90 people in a chemistry class which for me was a lot but I didn’t know my teacher until the end of the semester. But going on line and maybe having that feedback because you can collaborate more effectively whether you are using your computer, your cell phone or whatever hand held device, there could be some more instantaneous real time personalized feedback from students and teachers And then creativity is what I’ve been impressing upon this audience and speakers. You’ve got to think as you say Jim, imagine this, and what if, or how do I want to do that in the future?

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Yes and I think there are things that people haven’t even thought about yet. You go back 10 years and think about what we are doing today, no one thought about what we are doing today. John I know you’ve been involved with the subject for quite some time now. What are some of the things you are thinking about looking forward to doing in the future in a v6 world?

JOHN MCMANUS, COMMERCE

I have a personal one that I look forward to very much. I cannot wait until I have a high band width hand held device that provides me with mobility so that when I go to the airport I am not dumping out 5 different devices to go through security. I’m really looking forward to the point where the combination of high bandwidth and mobility allow me to do voice video and data on a small hand held device and when I go on travel I take one single device.

When you look in the consumer space, and Pete just mentioned this, how fast the cell phones have emerged and evolved, well look at the personal digital assistant, and smart phones. Actually there are 3 smart phones, you asked Glenn earlier, two out  today, and 1 out the 16^th of next month, they are going to be IPv6 out of the box. And as the infrastructure starts to build out to support those devices, mobility, peer to peer communication, high bandwidth. I really look forward to having a small hand held device and email to do video conferencing.

Real time video conferencing. I think from a business perspective that’s a huge value. I don’t have to have a desk top system and a laptop. I don’t have to have a PDA and a laptop. I get it down to a single device. I really think though that the consumer and the corporate world, that’s where we are going to see that growth first. And I think we are going to see that early in hand held devices.

And that’s going to be I think as important as driving the technology out so it is ubiquitous. There’s some key things that people talked about. The value to first responders is huge, but that will only get us so far. When you get out into the consumer space and you see the consumer takeout, that’s when you get mass production. There are cities now that are laying out 802 16 WiFi and Wimax grids to cover whole cities. So just think about when you have that device and you have always on networking, everywhere you go in the city.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

Yes we had this discussion when people were talking about when they think the internet took off in the past you had to plug into the wall, when you get to a point where you are on the internet but you don’t need to plug anything in, now all of a sudden the growth is exponential. Now when we talk about these future things and we talk interoperability, converged communications, is v6 an enabler for that? Will it help drive towards a converged market?  Today, the hand held radio that the law enforcement officer uses doesn’t talk to the cell phone and one brand of cell phone doesn’t talk to another brand of cell phone. Is v6 going to be an enabler that can help solve some of those problems we have out there today? Dave?

DAVID WEST, CISCO

I think as more devices have addresses and they come into any action area with addresses, v6 will enable those devices to more seriously communicate than they do today. If Pete and I were in the same room together and we wanted to share information right now, he would need to send information back to the Department of Education to get to me and I would have to send it back to Cisco. In a v6 world, we could potentially share information right now collaborate, move information back, send emails to each other and it would never have to go back to a data center anywhere.

We have customers now who are doing work overseas and that’s 30,000 workers on a site. That’s thousands of trailers. Those customers have to hardwire everything they do. Have to enable all those workers. They have to bring subcontractors in and they’ve spent millions of dollars trying to make all this stuff come together and provide technology to this work site. In a v6 world the way they see it is they can virtualize all those trailers.

They can provide mobility services. Subcontractors would come in with v6 addresses and automatically be able to communicate. We talk about the cell phone and a lot of talk about mobility. In Japan the killer application is the teenager with the cell phone with v6.  All this information being able to stream down, being able to listen to MP3 files, if they want to grab video files, on line gaming. If they walk by a supermarket and there’s a sale, v6 can automatically market and announce that to the cell phone. If they are driving in a car or on a train and they hear a song they can automatically download that song. There are tremendous capabilities that v6 will enable.

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

And that’s happening today. That’s not 5 or 10 years out down the road? Well perhaps we ought to have a dialogue around v6 and interoperability sometime because the trend right now, all the talk around town is that interoperability issue and the criticality of it, essentially for the security of the country and first responders  a better response. And what I’m hearing from you is these converged communications are happening today. Fred from GSA’s perspective are you looking at converged communications with the new programs going on at GSA and networks?

FRED SCHOBERT, GSA

Actually we are, one of the servicing efforts is converged ?? services (sounds like) for example and we went ahead and specked it even though we knew it wasn’t really pretty much the state of the practice service out there and we are looking at a lot of those things. One of the things I wanted to mention also in terms of convergence and the promise of IPv6 is the real benefit of IPv6 is going to occur in conjunction with other technologies as they mature.

For example the Department of Transportation’s working on combining IPv6 with a dedicated short range ?? technology for the potential of a, if you can think about it, an intelligent highway which would be a series of sensors embedded in the roadway. Imagine what that would do for you here in Washington DC. You’d have sensors in the roadway, you’d have a computer in your car and it would be able to tell you as you are driving in on 66 if there’s traffic congestion up ahead and if there is to give you an alternate route where there isn’t. And there’s all kinds of additional technologies that we see combining with IPv6 that will change the world that we are talking about here today.  

JIM FLYZIK, THE FLYZIK GROUP

I tell you what I’m hearing. A couple of things that I’m hearing. One is a direction for solving some of the interoperability problems that have been around is if we can get all the communications into an IP world. IPv6. Whether it be a LAN mobile radio or a VHF communication HF broadband 700 megahertz, whatever, if we can get it into an IP world then we can use that world in order to achieve this interoperability that we’ve been seeking for so long now to try to solve an awful lot of issues. It sounds to me like we may have another radio show evolving here where we need to talk about IPv6 in conjunction with billions of dollars of grants that are going out for interoperability to state and local agencies and the new ?? program that’s being done by the federal government. It seems to me that we ought to be trying to figure out how these pieces come together to create a vision for working together in the future.