be limited by the past’s hardware: All objects will be networkable, making the network an invisible part of everyday life.

## I nformation Appliances Running IPv6

When one considers how people will want to use the Internet—what kind of hardware they will want to use, it can be imagined that people will want appliances and televisions to join PCs, cell phones, and PDAs, as networked devices, so that their appliances can be remotely operated (Exhibit 1-33). With the emergence of ubiquitous networking, it is possible to look forward to a society seamlessly connected through all types of devices, everywhere. One of the stumbling blocks to achieving this, however, is that the current Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) has only 223 possible addresses (about 4.3 billion). As many as this is, it is not enough to give every device a unique IP number for connecting to the Internet. This is one reason public and private organizations are promoting a transition to the successor, Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) solves the address-shortage problem and offers enhanced security as well. This is why the e-Japan Strategy sets “to promote a transition to IPv6 equipped Internet” as one of its objectives.

Japan is in the forefront of R&D related to IPv6 implementation, and is at the point of conducting extensive testing. In October 2000, the IPv6 Promotion Council was founded, and the MPHPT has taken part in it as an observer. The Council set up an IPv6 Trial Network, built to comprehensively test every aspect of an IPv6 network, from terminal equipment using IPv6 to the overall network structure, which includes normal households. This is the first such large-scale test of IPv6 in the world.

A communications protocol used for ubiquitous network in the home, such as this is, can be expected to work with a variety of transmission media—wireless LANs and Bluetooth $ ^{™} $ as well as power lines. Bluetooth $ ^{™} $ is a very short-range wireless communication protocol, and power-line transmission piggybacks a data signal on the electrical wiring that already runs through homes. Both can be expected to be popular options, as neither requires any new wiring in the home to hook up information appliances. Bluetooth is already being used in products that network appliances in the home, in fact, while similar products based on power-line transmission are currently under consideration for near-term commercialization.

## Developing New Services for Network Management of Distributed Data

To extract the full value from a ubiquitous network, the desired data must be instantly accessible anytime, anywhere. Corporations already come to use data centers that permit data management over the Internet. With the spread of broadband access, personal users as well will want to be able to call up data from their home PCs, and indeed, Web services that provide sophisticated services in a way that is readily accessible to the user, linking together various services that are available over the Internet, already provide an integrated interface to personal information over the network, and this new development is gathering considerable attention. Communications protocols like SOAP, that tie together applications, UDDI, for regist

Exhibit 1-33 Network Devices that Internet Users Would Like to Be Able to Use

Source: Survey Concerning Safety and Future Technologies in the Field of Information and Communications