Of course, the biggest push the feds could give IPv6 would be to use it themselves. Which will happen by mid-2008, according to an Office of Management and Budget policy directive.

What's going on? Simple: The chickens and eggs are at it again.

You know the chicken-and-egg problem: IPv6 is a better protocol for the Internet, but like lots of new technologies, it's competing against an installed base. (OK, new-ish -- IPv6 is a decade old.) The installed base is IPv4, which turns 25 this year and handles the vast majority of Internet traffic.

There's lots of IPv6-capable equipment out there. But there's even more IPv4-only equipment, and IPv6 gear also works in IPv4, so that's the default. The advantages of IPv6 only come when a connection is end-to-end IPv6. But converting to IPv6 is costly. And until enough networks are converted -- especially the big one, the public Internet -- we can't reap IPv6's advantages to justify the cost. No chickens, no eggs. No eggs, no chickens.

Which brings us back to the dueling statements from the Commerce Department and the OMB. The Commerce Department's task force points out correctly that in the near term -- say, the next five years -- we won't get much advantage from IPv6. In fact, "premature" adoption could result in higher costs and even reduced Internet security. (You can read the whole report at http://nist.gov/director/prog-ofc/IPv6-final.pdf.)