Timothy Winters, senior manager at the University of New Hampshire's InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), gets calls every week from headhunters looking to hire network engineers, network architects, and software developers with experience in IPv6, the looming upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol.
"A lot of people are sending me job opportunities in the IPv6 space," says Winters, who has more than 10 years of experience testing routers, firewalls and other network devices for compatibility with IPv6-related standards. Winters says the IPv6 hiring frenzy is the result of "a lot of companies rushing as fast as they can to get IPv6 deployed in their products."
[ InfoWorld's Matt Prigge teaches you how to build your own IPv6 lab on the cheap and provides a handy IPv6 checklist. | Get expert networking how-to advice from InfoWorld's Networking Deep Dive PDF special report. | Keep up on the latest networking news with our Technology: Networking newsletter. ]
The sudden demand for IT professionals with IPv6 experience coincides with a push by content providers such as Yahoo, carriers like AT&T, and network equipment vendors like Juniper to expand their IPv6 offerings.
CIOs from all vertical industries are realizing that they need to deploy IPv6 on their public-facing websites in the next few months or risk making these sites unavailable to new Internet users and devices that ship with IPv6 addresses.
PANIC TIME: IPv6 quiz
The growing interest in IPv6 is the result of the Internet having run out of unassigned addressing using the existing version of the Internet Protocol known as IPv4.
Another driver for IPv6-related job opportunities is World IPv6 Day, a 24-hour trial of IPv6 that is scheduled for June 8. Dozens of high-profile network companies and content providers -- including Cisco, Juniper, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft -- have announced plans to participate in World IPv6 Day.
"I've seen a lot of companies wanting to demo or show stuff around World IPv6 Day," Winters says.
DEBUNKED: The 6 biggest misconceptions about IPv6
Meanwhile, U.S. federal agencies must adopt IPv6 on their public-facing websites and services by September 2012 because of a new mandate from the Obama administration.
