Use data to tell you the current status of IPv6 development in China in 2021

A few days ago, Xiao Wei shared with everyone the real experience of using IPv6 in China. Although there are still many problems with IPv6, it can be said that it has been greatly improved compared with the previous two years.

Today, we will no longer look at the micro level, but understand the current status of IPv6 development in China from a macro perspective.

Note: The data in this article are all from the "National IPv6 Development and Testing Platform."

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Active Users

Since the issuance of the "Action Plan for Promoting Large-Scale Deployment of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)", the number of active IPv6 Internet users has maintained rapid growth, from 165 million active users in 2019 to 545.7 million in the second half of 2021, an increase of 230.72%. The proportion of active Internet users has also increased from 19.32% in 2019 to 54.34%. The promotion of IPv6 has achieved significant results.

However, the current size of my country's Internet users is 989 million, and there is still a lot of room for development in the number of active IPv6 Internet users.

The number of active IPv6 terminal connections refers to the number of fixed and mobile terminals that have obtained IPv6 addresses and have valid IPv6 traffic records (excluding Ping and domain name resolution traffic) within 30 days, as calculated by basic telecommunications operators. It is measured in "100 million" and can reflect the IPv6 support status of my country's basic network.

It has grown from 658.8 million in the first half of 2019 to 1.4918 billion in the second half of 2021, ranking first in the world.

Bandwidth Users

The number of users with IPv6 allocated addresses can reflect the support status of IPv6 in my country's broadband access network.

The number of users with IPv6 broadband addresses has increased steadily year by year, but the proportion of users with IPv6 broadband addresses has not changed significantly. This shows that there is still a considerable proportion of terminal devices and access networks that do not support IPv6.

Major breakthroughs have been made in IPv6 support for home broadband access networks. The number of users with IPv6 allocated addresses on fixed networks has soared from 58.3 million in the first half of 2018 to 314.8 million, with fixed network users accounting for 64.63%.

Mobile devices are relatively easy to promote IPv6 due to their high frequency of hardware replacement and late start. Therefore, the number of users with mobile network IPv6 addresses reached its peak in 2019 and maintained steady growth thereafter.

Traffic Statistics

How many users are willing to give priority to IP6 networks?

Proportion of IPv6 traffic in metropolitan area networks:

Mobile core network IPv6 traffic share:

The proportion of IPv6 traffic at backbone direct connection points:

It can be seen that the priority usage rate of IPv6 is not high, mainly because IPv6 construction is a large project that requires all-round support from the bottom up. Although the speed of IPv6 promotion in my country has greatly increased, it has not yet achieved the same experience as IPv4.

Basic resources

The number of IPv6 addresses applied for in mainland China has steadily increased, surpassing developed countries such as the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, ranking first in the world.

Terminal Ready

In terms of terminal equipment, most home routers, smart home gateways, and LTE mobile terminals already support IPv6 networks.

Judging from the data, TP-Link, Huawei, and ASUS routers all support IPv6 networks, while Xiaomi's 2019 4A Gigabit Edition and Xiaomi Router 4 do not support IPv6.

Smart home gateways from ZTE, Huawei, Youhua, and Shenzhen Skyworth all support IPv6.

In terms of LTE mobile terminals, Xiaomi, Apple, and OnePlus all support IPv6 100%, while Huawei's nova series does not support it.

Website Application

government

The IPv6 support rate of central ministries and provincial government portal websites has reached 81.42%. Except for the Ministry of State Security and the State Oceanic Administration, which do not have domain names and are not included in the statistics, websites that do not support IPv6 also have AAAA records. In the near future, these websites will also support IPv6 access.

Central Enterprises

The IPv6 support rate of central enterprises is 82.11%. Similar to the above, even if the website does not support IPv6, it still has an AAAA record.

media

The central key news media have achieved 100% support for IPv6.

internet

The support rate of IPv6 for Internet websites is only 33.7%. Among them, websites with large user bases such as Toutiao, Sina Weibo, Douban, Zhihu, Youku, Tencent Video, Tmall, Taobao, and Baidu do not support IPv6. This is also one of the main reasons why a large number of netizens do not give priority to using IPv6.

finance

Except for the China Development Bank, all central financial enterprises have supported IPv6 networks.

educate

The support rate for IPv6 on the websites of Double First-Class Universities is 84.67%. Only the Beihang University neither supports IPv6 nor has an AAAA record.

Ministry of Industry and Information Technology

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's support rate for IPv6 is 80.77%.

APP

The support rate of IPv6 for the top 100 applications is as high as 99%, with 360 Search being the only one that does not support IPv6.

From the above data, we can draw some conclusions.

First, we have seen the determination of the country to vigorously promote IPv6 and the progress made in recent years. Whether it is active users, broadband users, terminal devices or website applications, the support rate and popularity of IPv6 have been greatly improved. I believe that in the near future, every device will have a corresponding IP address.

Second, IPv6 at this stage cannot meet the demand for Internet access, and there is still a big gap in experience with IPv4. According to the goals set by the Action Plan for Promoting Large-Scale Deployment of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), by 2025, my country's IPv6 network scale, user scale, and traffic scale will rank first in the world, and networks, applications, and terminals will fully support IPv6, and fully complete the smooth evolution and upgrade to the next-generation Internet, forming a world-leading next-generation Internet technology industry system.

In other words, by 2025, China's IPv6 era will finally arrive!