Expert: China ranks second in the world in terms of the number of IPv6 addresses

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The global Internet Protocol (IP) address allocation is transitioning to the next generation Internet based on IPv6. Experts from the Asia-Pacific Internet Network Information Center said at the 2018 Global Next Generation Internet Summit that the United States currently ranks first in the world in terms of both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses, while China ranks second in the world in terms of both types of addresses.

IPv6 is the abbreviation of "Internet Protocol Version 6". It is the next-generation Internet core protocol designed by the Internet Engineering Task Force to replace the current "Internet Protocol Version 4" (IPv4).

As one of the world's five major regional Internet registries, the Asia-Pacific Network Information Center is responsible for the allocation and management of IP addresses and related resources in the Asia-Pacific region. Pan Guangliang, the director of registration services of the center, said in a report on the 22nd that the IPv4 version of the Internet Protocol addresses has been allocated out in general. As of December 2017, there was less than one Class A IPv4 address left in the world's five major regions, and the African Network Information Center, which has the largest number of remaining addresses, had only 0.76 remaining.

IPv6 address allocation has thus entered the "fast lane". According to statistics from the world's five major regional Internet registries, as of December 2017, more than 90% of member units in Latin America and the Caribbean have both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses, the highest proportion in the world; and in Africa, where this proportion is the lowest, about 43% of member units have both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses.

"For the total number of IPv6 protocol addresses, the ones that have been allocated are just a drop in the ocean, so we don't need to worry about running out of IPv6 addresses, but how to use them well," said Pan Guangliang. Currently, the top five countries with the most IPv6 addresses are the United States, China, the United Kingdom, Germany and France.

Pan Guangliang predicts that more IP addresses will be allocated to China in the next few years, and "in the future, the number of IPv6 addresses owned by China may exceed that of the United States."