IPv6 "highway" has been fully built, the next stop is to focus on "opening to traffic"

Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology held a national deployment and implementation meeting for the three-year special action to increase IPv6 traffic, and interpreted and promoted the policy of the "Three-Year Special Action Plan to Increase IPv6 Traffic (2021-2023)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Three-Year Action Plan") for the information and communication industry.

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"China's IPv6 network 'highway' has been fully built." Xie Cun, director of the Information and Communications Development Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at the meeting. It is understood that at present, my country's IPv6 transformation has been basically completed, and the next work will focus on "opening to traffic."

IPv6 network "highway" has been fully built

"China's IPv6 network 'highway' has been fully built," said Xie Cun, director of the Information and Communications Development Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. As of the end of July 2021, my country's applied IPv6 address resources ranked first in the world, and the number of users who obtained IPv6 addresses increased from 74 million at the end of 2017 to 1.61 billion. In particular, operators are currently improving the IPv6 network "highway" in accordance with the established goals:

The number of active IPv6 connections in China Mobile's entire network has reached 866.8 million, of which 730.4 million are mobile networks and 136.4 million are fixed networks. All self-operated websites and applications have completed all IPv6 transformations, of which the IPv6 concentration of the second and third-level links of self-operated websites (external links have been removed) has reached 100%, and the IPv6 concentration of self-operated applications is 96.5% because they cannot exclude the impact of external links. In particular, the transformation of self-owned terminals has completed the IPv6 upgrade of all fixed broadband terminals that can be remotely upgraded, and the proportion of fixed broadband terminals that support IPv6 has reached 97.6% and the proportion of mobile terminals has reached 95%. Among them, the proportion of fixed broadband terminals that have obtained IPv6 addresses has reached 79%, and the industry target of 70% for 2021 has been completed.

China Unicom's newly built networks currently fully support IPv6. Fixed broadband networks, 4G networks, IDCs, and the Internet of Things have all been upgraded and renovated. Major websites and apps fully support IPv6, and all new terminals have IPv6 enabled by default.

China Telecom's network provides comprehensive and high-quality IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack services. Both mobile and fixed networks support and provide IPv6 services. Except for old 2/3G terminals, all other mobile terminals support IPv6. The IPv6 upgrade of all remotely upgradeable routing home gateways has been completed, and the IPv6 address allocation rate for fixed network terminals has reached 77%. The quality of IPv6 networks is basically the same as that of IPv4, and is even better than IPv4 in some network directions.

China Radio and Television has planned to fully support IPv6 since the early days of network construction. It has now completed the construction of backbone networks in Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, Chengdu and other places, and all network equipment at all nodes supports IPv6. In addition, it has also carried out exploration of IPv6+ and other converged media live broadcast applications in the 5G core network pilot demonstration area, and the trial demonstration has achieved good results.

Make up for the shortcomings and move towards "opening to traffic"

Statistics show that the number of users with allocated IPv6 addresses in my country has reached 1.61 billion, and the number of active IPv6 users has reached 535 million. my country's IPv6 transformation has been basically completed.

Just like the principle of a wooden barrel, how much water it can hold is determined by the shortest board. There are still some shortcomings in the process of IPv6 being "open to traffic", and the next step should be to focus on performance optimization.

"The transformation of commercial Internet applications is not deep enough and has failed to drive the overall traffic scale to increase." Wang Zhiqin, deputy director of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, emphasized, "At present, the average IPv6 concentration of my country's top 100 commercial Internet applications is less than 40%. Most applications can only be accessed through the IPv6 homepage, and deeper links do not support IPv6 access. The core content of high-traffic applications such as video, live broadcast, and games rarely supports IPv6 access. This will be the key work that all parties in the industry need to pay attention to and promote in the next step."

In this regard, efforts should be made to increase traffic, promote in-depth IPv6 transformation of large-traffic commercial platforms, give priority to IPv6 access to deep-level content such as second- and third-level links, drive up IPv6 traffic, strengthen IPv6 entry management for commercial applications, and require newly launched mobile Internet applications to support IPv6.

In addition, terminal support is an important factor affecting the development of IPv6. my country's mobile terminals have a high degree of persistence in IPv6, but fixed terminals still have bottlenecks. Today, the bottleneck constraints of LTE terminals have been eliminated, but the IPv6 support of terminals such as home routers, Internet TV terminals, and IoT terminals is still low. Most of them do not enable the IPv6 function by default, which directly affects the ability of users to obtain IPv6 addresses in fixed networks and restricts the increase of IPv6 traffic.

Therefore, the "last mile" of IPv6 support for home terminals needs to be further opened up. The "Three-Year Action Plan" provides specific measures: First, the newly manufactured home wireless routers, smart TVs, set-top boxes, smart home terminals and IoT terminal modules of major terminal equipment companies fully support IPv6. Terminal equipment with IP address allocation function should enable IPv6 address allocation function by default, and can redistribute network-side IPv6 address prefixes to users. Second, basic telecommunications companies, Internet access service providers, and terminal equipment companies should accelerate the support of IPv6 for qualified stock terminal equipment through firmware and system upgrades, guide users to replace old terminal equipment, and gradually realize the support of IPv6 for online home gateways, enterprise gateways, home wireless routers and other terminals. Major e-commerce platforms will further strengthen the promotion of terminal products that support IPv6, and facilitate users to choose related products by establishing IPv6 terminal product areas.