Network Acceleration Sprint 10 Upgrades Review of the First Half of 2018

The network industry in the first half of 2018 can be summarized as ten major upgrades. The most exciting is undoubtedly the news that IPv6 will be officially commercialized soon, and both the network connection speed and connection capacity will be increased by more than ten times. In addition, the trial commercialization of 5G will begin this year. 5G has a network speed 100 times that of 4G, and operators are working together to sprint towards 5G. While the speed of home broadband has increased, it has also brought about a wave of upgrades to wireless routers. Musk's satellite launch has made satellite Internet look like an arms race among countries. Wireless networks and enterprise networks are evolving to the next generation. Please see the details of these ten major upgrades:

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1. IPv6 will soon be officially commercialized

In the first half of 2018, the country accelerated the large-scale deployment of IPv6. As a major country in Internet application, China took the lead in layout. The "Snowman Project" initiated by the National Engineering Center for Next Generation Internet has completed the installation of 25 IPv6 root servers worldwide, and deployed 4 in China, thus ending the dilemma of China having no root servers. (In the IPv4 era, there were 13 root servers in the world, 10 of which were in the United States, 2 in Europe, and 1 in Japan).

In the next 5-10 years, the construction of IPv6 networks will reach a new peak, bringing business opportunities. Whether it is operators or enterprises and industry users, in the process of transitioning to IPv6, they will inevitably face the situation of upgrading routers and other equipment. Network equipment manufacturers such as Huawei, ZTE, and H3C will enjoy the business opportunities brought by IPv6 applications.

2. Fierce competition for 5G

In January, two major US operators, AT&T and Verizon, announced that they would launch 5G commercial services in the second half of the year. Although this model is not considered to be true 5G, but just a mobile version of the fiber optic network, global operators are getting impatient. South Korea will conduct 5G commercial trials at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, and Japan has also announced that 5G networks will be commercially available at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Although the construction of 5G networks is a race against time, operators are under tremendous pressure. China Mobile will build trial networks in five cities in the first quarter of 2018; China Unicom has submitted 5G trial applications in seven cities to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology; and China Telecom will achieve pre-commercial deployment of 5G networks in 2019.

3. Home broadband speed increased to 200M

During the World Telecommunication Day event on May 17, 2018, Beijing Unicom's free speed-up event was a pleasant surprise. Beijing Unicom announced the launch of the seventh broadband speed-up and fee reduction. Annual and monthly broadband users with 100M or less will be upgraded to 200M for free; the original 200M users will be upgraded to 300M. As long as eligible users who have applied for Beijing Unicom broadband before May 17 can enjoy it. The upgrade is so powerful, it can be seen that the operator has responded strongly to the State Council and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's requirements for speed-up and fee reduction. Beijing Unicom's free speed-up project will be completed in batches before June 30. After completion, the proportion of Unicom broadband users with 200M and above in Beijing will reach more than 90%.

4. Wireless router consumption upgrade

Through the user attention to the wireless router market in the first half of 2018, we can find that the wireless router market is quietly undergoing a "consumption upgrade". The era of "buying a wireless router with WiFi for 50-60 yuan" has passed. Now high-speed optical fiber has entered the home. Watching videos, playing games, video chatting, shopping online at home..., the requirements for WiFi networks are getting higher and higher. Supporting 100M and above optical fiber access, no lag in the Internet, video buffering in seconds, and no high delay in King of Glory, consumers' demand for wireless routers has changed.

5. Evolution to Future Networks

In the first half of 2018, the Future Network Experimental Network has been deployed in 12 major cities across the country and has been interconnected with the existing Internet. The Future Network Experimental Network divides the network into three levels and uses multiple clouds to build the network. Among them, the backbone network bandwidth is 100G, the data center bandwidth is 40G, and the edge node bandwidth is 10G. The experimental network will automatically mobilize network resources according to actual needs. The experimental network is currently making breakthroughs in projects such as "4K/8K video", "VR/AR business", and "artificial intelligence network optimization".

The first thing that will be reflected after the future network upgrade is the upgrade in user experience, with faster and better Internet access experience; secondly, the manufacturer's basic network equipment will also be upgraded, which will in turn drive the upgrade of the manufacturer's overall strategic layout... In fact, the upgrade brought about by the future network will bring about the upgrade of the entire Internet industry.

6. Operators tap into IoT

Faced with the huge market brought by the Internet of Things, my country's operators are actively expanding the scale of Internet of Things deployment and improving the application experience of the Internet of Things to lay a solid foundation for increasing revenue. China Telecom and China Mobile have completed the construction of the world's largest NB-IoT network. Among them, China Mobile's typical case is to provide Mobike with an Internet of Things solution and a Hong Kong and China Gas project based on the NB-IoT network. China Telecom, together with Huawei, took the lead in commercializing a smart water project based on NB-IoT technology in Shenzhen. In the future, it will also drive industry, wearable devices, smart homes, self-driving cars, smart robots, smart cities, and the sharing economy. Together with the three industries mentioned above, operators will establish ten major industry systems based on Internet of Things technology.

7. Satellite Internet Becomes Popular

At the end of February this year, Space X sent two more Starlink satellites into space. The Starlink project, which uses satellites to provide high-speed Internet to the world, has actually been established a long time ago. Space X plans to deploy 4,424 satellites in low-altitude orbit in 2018 and eventually 12,000 satellites. The satellites in the Starlink project will provide high-speed Internet connections with a rate of 1Gbps to the world, eliminating the digital divide.

China Aerospace is also building the "Fuxing" system, planning to launch 156 low-Earth orbit satellites. The first phase will realize transparent forwarding of the space-to-ground network, and the second phase will realize the integration of space and ground networking to solve the problem of Internet access in remote and difficult-to-cover areas.

8. Wireless mesh networks for enterprises

Two years after the emergence of wireless mesh networking, the emerging wireless mesh network began to enter the enterprise market in 2018. The emergence of wireless mesh network equipment provides another option for enterprise WiFi deployment. Small office areas and shops cannot be fully covered by a home-grade wireless router. The price of AC+AP is too expensive.

Limited by the input cost and technical level, AC+AP WiFi deployment is unaffordable for small and micro enterprises and merchants. However, wireless mesh network is affordable and the product configuration is simple, just like using a home wireless router. The node router settings can be completed automatically by the device, and there is no need to hire separate operation and maintenance personnel.

9. The emergence of a third market in the US communications market

In the US communications market, the industry has long been dominated by two giants. In May, the third largest operator in the US, T-Mobile, and the fourth largest operator, Sprint, merged. After the merger of these two operators, the third pole of the US communications market was created. T-Mobile and Sprint ranked third and fourth in the US communications market, with market shares of 19% and 12% respectively. After the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, the scale and market share will exceed AT&T, becoming the second largest mobile operator in the United States. This will break the two-strong competition between AT&T and Verizon and work together to accelerate the development of 5G business.

10. WPA3 protocol is released

The WPA2 security protocol, which is currently widely used, has been cracked for a long time, and the security of WiFi is in a precarious situation. The WiFi Alliance announced the WPA3 encryption protocol at the end of May. It has improved the four major security aspects of the Internet of Things, encryption strength, prevention of brute force attacks, and public WiFi. If you want to enjoy the WPA3 network, the wireless devices in your hands must be completely replaced.

Conclusion:

In the first half of the year, mobile phones cancelled call roaming, which will not continue in the second half. For example, starting from July 1, the three major operators will cancel the mobile data roaming fee, and the era of nationwide data traffic will come. In the second half of the year, 5G trial commercial use will also be launched around the world. Speeding up and expanding capacity are the two themes of network development. In the second half of 2018, the network industry will continue to upgrade around these two themes. I hope there will be more surprises when I look back at the end of the year.