IPv6, the Internet address protocol for the future, is among the technologies that MPE/iX will not support this year. This Version 6 of software that routes Web traffic was among those that OpenMPE was considering when it applied for its license for the MPE/iX source. It was suggested back in 2008 that a contract project might have revised the 3000's networking to accomodate the new protocol.

But native support for IPv6 networking won't matter as much as some 3000 managers expected. Although the 3000 was prepared to do DNS service, the vendor didn't build a patch in 2009 to eliminate a security hole in DNS for MPE/iX. That's bedrock technology for Internet protocols, so it would have to be made secure. Much of this kind of routing for 3000 shops takes place on external PC systems today. You can even make an older Windows XP box do IPv6, according to Paul Edwards, a former OpenMPE volunteer who's a training resource for the 3000 community.

The new networking will become much more essential to an IT operation this year. Earlier this month the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority issued the last block of IPv4 addresses. Another organization, the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), advised that companies that do business over the Internet should support IPv6 on public-facing Web serversor  Web services by Jan. 1, 2012 or risk losing potential customers.