The Internet Protocol (IP) is an international communications standard that is essential to the operation of both the public Internet and many private networks in existence today. IP provides a standardised 'envelope' that carries addressing, routing, and message-handling information, thereby enabling a message to be transmitted from its source to its final destination over the various interconnected networks that comprise the Internet. The current generation of IP, version 4 (IPv4), has been in use for more than 20 years and has supported the Internet's rapid growth during that time. With the transformation of the Internet in the 1990s from a research network to a commercialised network, concerns were raised about the ability of IPv4 to accommodate anticipated increasing demand for Internet addresses. In 1993, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) began a design and standardisation process to develop a next generation Internet Protocol that would address, among other issues, the predicted exhaustion of available IPv4 addresses. The resulting set of standards, collectively known as IP version 6 (IPv6), was developed over the course of several years. IETF, a stable core of IPv6 protocols emerged by 1998. This book examines the technical and economic issues related to IPv6 adoption in the United States, including the appropriate role of government, international interoperability, security in transition, and costs and benefits of IPv6 deployment.

A report to congressional committees regarding the DoD¿s progress in implementing GAO's recommendations over the last 7 years. During this period of time, GAO issued 637 reports to DoD that included 2,726 recommendations. By law, agencies, including DoD, are required to submit written statements explaining actions taken in response to recommendations that have been made. This report contains the results of an analysis on the implementation status of the 2,726 recommendations made to DoD in reports issued during FY 2001 through 2007. Includes examples of related financial accomplishments reported for the period, based on DoD-related work. Illustrations.

What are the global implications of the looming shortage of Internet addresses and the slow deployment of the new IPv6 protocol designed to solve this problem? The Internet has reached a critical point. The world is running out of Internet addresses. There is a finite supply of approximately 4.3 billion Internet Protocol (IP) addresses—the unique binary numbers required for every exchange of information over the Internet—within the Internet's prevailing technical architecture (IPv4). In the 1990s the Internet standards community selected a new protocol (IPv6) that would expand the number of Internet addresses exponentially—to 340 undecillion addresses. Despite a decade of predictions about imminent global conversion, IPv6 adoption has barely begun. Protocol Politics examines what's at stake politically, economically, and technically in the selection and adoption of a new Internet protocol. Laura DeNardis's key insight is that protocols are political. IPv6 intersects with provocative topics including Internet civil liberties, US military objectives, globalization, institutional power struggles, and the promise of global democratic freedoms. DeNardis offers recommendations for Internet standards governance, based not only on technical concerns but on principles of openness and transparency, and examines the global implications of looming Internet address scarcity versus the slow deployment of the new protocol designed to solve this problem.

These proceedings contain the 25 papers that were accepted for presentation at the Eighth Information Hiding Conference, held July 10-12, 2006 in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. The paperswere selectedby the ProgramCommittee from more than 70 submissions on the basis of their novelty, originality, and scienti?c merit. We aregratefulto allauthorswho submitted their workforconsideration. The papers were divided into ten sessions [Watermarking, Information Hiding and Networking, Data Hiding in Unusual Content (2 sessions), Fundamentals, Software Protection, Steganalysis, Steganography (2 sessions), and Subliminal Channels], showing the breadth of research in the?eld. This year was an imp- tant one in the history of the IHW: "Workshop" was dropped from the name to show that the?eld has matured andthat the conference has become the premier venue for the dissemination of new results. The conference employed a double-blind reviewing process. Each paper was examined by at least three reviewers. Papers submitted by ProgramCommittee members were held to a higher standard. We relied on the advice of outside colleagues and would like to extend our thanks for their contribution to the paper selection process and their dedication to excellence in research.