Wu Jianping: IPv6 is an important development opportunity for the next generation Internet to expand network space

On December 7, the GNTC Global Network Technology Conference was held in Beijing. Network technology experts from all over the world will focus on discussing the new foundations of network technology such as IPv6, SDN, 5G, and cloud, and build a new network architecture based on this, and jointly imagine the future network. At the conference, Wu Jianping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor at Tsinghua University, delivered a keynote speech on "The Development and Thinking of China's IPv6 Next Generation Internet".

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In his speech, Academician Wu not only mentioned the relationship between the Internet and cyberspace, the core technologies of the Internet, and the new situation of the development of the new IPv6 next-generation Internet, but also talked about the challenges and opportunities that IPv6 brings in expanding various cyberspaces and solving cyberspace security issues.

The relationship between the Internet and cyberspace, and the core technologies of the Internet

At present, the Internet is gradually developing into a relatively large cyberspace, which is the fifth airspace created by humans after land, sea, air and space. Cyberspace is mainly composed of computing systems, from small smartphones, every device in the Internet of Things to large supercomputer systems, which are all computing systems. This is the most fundamental part of cyberspace; the second part is the network that connects these devices, and the connection formed by various communication systems and networks based on the Internet; the third part is the various influences formed in the environment, which is also a part of cyberspace.

In cyberspace, what is the core technology of the Internet? Wu Jianping said that the core technology of the Internet is actually the system architecture of the Internet. The system architecture of any thing refers to the functional composition and mutual relationship of the various parts of the thing. In the Internet, the network layer plays a connecting role.

The real network layer is composed of three elements. The first is the transmission format. The original intention of the Internet is to use the Internet to connect all communication systems and networks, so its standard transmission format is very important (that is, the IPv4 protocol, which will be replaced by the new IPv6 protocol). The second is the conversion method. The most important reason why the Internet wins among many networks and technologies is that it uses connectionless packet switching technology, that is, IP technology. This switching technology forms the core of the Internet. The Internet sends data from one end to the other by relying on the routing control algorithm in the middle, and there are many challenges and opportunities in the middle. The difficulty of the core technology of the Internet lies in the fact that while the transmission format and conversion method are relatively stable, routing control must meet the growing applications and the ever-changing development of communication and network technologies. Therefore, the optimal Internet architecture and routing control are actually the most difficult part.

New Situation of IPv6 Next Generation Internet Development

The Internet settled on the IPv4 protocol format in the early 1980s, and it has been in use ever since. Today, the demand for Internet development is growing. In 2012, the global allocation of IPv4 addresses was completed, and IPv6 has experienced explosive growth in recent years. After more than a decade of research, a new network structure that can replace the IP protocol has not yet been found, so it can be predicted that IPv6 will definitely be the main protocol of the Internet in the next 10 to 20 years.

In the early days, China was technologically backward and did not apply for a large number of IP addresses. Many units used private addresses and then converted them to public addresses at the export. Now, the IPv6 protocol has brought us great opportunities. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was no experience in large-scale IPv6 networking internationally. The massive address space of IPv6 will bring new challenges and difficulties.

Under this circumstance, after two years of research and demonstration, the State Council approved the plan of eight ministries to apply to the state to launch the China Next Generation Internet Demonstration Project CNGI. After five years, the first phase of the work was completed. After five years, the world's largest IPv6 demonstration network was built at that time. At the same time, a number of key Internet IPv6 technologies were developed and conquered, including operators, equipment manufacturers, and application software developers. In 2008, it was rated as the second place in China's top ten scientific and technological advances.

After that, China formulated a roadmap and timetable for the next generation of the Internet, with the period before 2010 as the preparation stage, the transition period from 2011 to 2015, and the completion stage after 2016. In the first stage, China took the lead internationally, and built the world's largest pure IPv6 demonstration network through cooperation with nearly 100 universities, equipment manufacturers, and operators. Second, it mainly used domestic equipment, with 70% of the equipment made in China to build the IP backbone network, which was not achieved on the IPv4 network at the time.

It is worth mentioning that China has made very advanced achievements in the field of IETF, the International Organization for Standardization. One is tunnel technology, and the other is translation technology. Both have made great progress. In addition, in the future network, many security issues will still exist, and China is in the leading position in solving security issues.

IPv6 brings challenges and opportunities to solving cyberspace security issues

As IPv4 addresses are being allocated globally, the global IPv6 network has shown a relatively large development trend since 2013. Global IPv6 traffic has increased tenfold from 2012 to 2015, and it is expected that IPv6 traffic will exceed IPv4 in 2018.

Why did China achieve its strategic goals as early as the first phase in 2008, but its development has slowed down and fallen behind the international level in recent years? First, China is relatively backward in the use of Internet technology; second, the technology is backward and the application address is limited; third, the Internet lacks due international competition; finally, the cost and price of China's Internet security regulatory measures are relatively high. As far as IPv6 is concerned, the entire migration needs to be rebuilt.

However, the Internet has a great opportunity to solve the cyberspace security problem in IPv6. The Internet is an open network. In such an open network, all access is untrustworthy. The source address of each packet access will not be verified. If this problem can be solved, the security level of the Internet will be greatly improved.

Internet security faces many challenges. The Internet is the foundation of cyberspace. The core of network security includes computing system security, network security, and application security, and the three are different and completely independent. Among them, the source address is not authenticated, which leads to many problems such as routing. DDOS attacks are also based on this. In addition, it also includes large-scale domain name hijacking.

Before the end of his speech, Wu Jianping said that the Internet is an important infrastructure of cyberspace, and the Internet architecture is the core technology of the Internet. When there are 10,000 IETF standards in the world and China has 1,000 IETF standards, the situation in China will change.

Cyberspace security has become an important strategic need for the country. Mastering the core Internet technology is the key to solving cyberspace security issues. It is based on the secure and reliable next-generation Internet architecture of IPv6 source address verification. It can be seen that the IPv6 next-generation Internet is an important development opportunity to expand cyberspace and solve cyberspace security issues. It is necessary to master the core technology to solve security issues.