Domestic IPv6 system deployment speeds up and IPv6 application boom is coming

The current Internet Protocol address IPv4 address pool has been exhausted, and IPv6 is also being deployed at an accelerated pace around the world. However, the actual application level of IPv6 in my country is currently very low.

To this end, the Chinese government proposed to build the world's largest IPv6 commercial application network in 5 to 10 years. At the same time, yesterday, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a notice on the implementation of the "Action Plan for Promoting the Large-Scale Deployment of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)" (Tingzi [2017] No. 47, hereinafter referred to as the "Action Plan"), which elaborated on the implementation of IPv6 from six aspects.

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The IPv4 address pool has been exhausted

IPv6 address is the next generation Internet Protocol address. The currently commonly used Internet Protocol address is IPv4 address. IPv6 is the next generation Internet IP protocol designed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to replace IPv4.

IPv4 specifies that the length of an IP address is 32 bits (based on the TCP/IP reference model), which means there are 2^32-1 addresses. IPv6 uses a 128-bit address length, which can provide addresses almost without restriction.

However, by the end of October 2016, the IPv4 address pools in Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and North America had been completely exhausted. my country has only 338 million IPv4 addresses for its 751 million Internet users, or 0.45 IP addresses per person.

What is more gratifying is that the current global IPv6 deployment rate has entered a stage of accelerated improvement.

The latest data shows that in terms of the number of users, India ranks first in the world, with more than 200 million active IPv6 users; the United States ranks second with more than 100 million users. In terms of traffic, Belgium has the highest percentage of IPv6 traffic, reaching 62%, followed by Germany.

In addition, global IPv6 deployment has also made breakthroughs. The latest statistics show that the IPv6 deployment rate in the United States, Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Japan has exceeded 40%. Google's IPv6 user visits have also exceeded 20%. Now major large-scale commercial websites such as Google, Youtube, and Facebook all support IPv6.

The actual application level of IPv6 in my country is very low

China is the country that needs IPv6 the most. It is also the first country in the world to carry out IPv6 and next-generation Internet technology research and standard formulation and content development. We pioneered the construction of a pure IPv6 network, which was the largest IPv6 network in the world at that time. As of December 31, 2017, my country's total number of IPv6 addresses allocated ranked second in the world.

However, the actual application of IPv6 in China is relatively low at present, and the network applications frequently visited by netizens, such as websites, emails and domain name services, have low actual support for IPv6. It is reported that the IPv6 user penetration rate in China is only 0.39%, ranking 67th in the world.

Moreover, the monitoring data of the Global IPv6 Testing Center shows that the IPv6 support rate of the top 50 websites in the Alexa global ranking is 42%, and websites such as Google, Wikipedia, and Yahoo can be stably accessed via IPv6. However, most of the websites in my country are not connected to IPv6, and only one of the top 50 websites has a stable IPv6 access address.

Experts say five aspects have slowed down the progress of IPv6 in China

Indeed, internationally, the promotion of IPv6 is often led by governments.

Wu Hequan, chairman of the Internet Society of China and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, pointed out at last year's Global Network Technology Conference (GNTC) that the government lacks a clear market orientation and a sense of priority in government applications. "In developed countries, the military and government usually switch to IPv6 first, but our government websites have not played the leading role they should have."

At the same time, he also pointed out that domestic private address translation (NAT) and IPv4 address translation destroy end-to-end transparency and there is no way to trace the user.

There are also some deviations in concepts, which believe that IPv6 will affect network security. In fact, the United States has many IPv4 addresses. The United States is now developing IPv6 because IPv6 is conducive to tracing users and counter-terrorism.

Some are taking a wait-and-see attitude, saying they will deploy IPv6 but taking no action.

In addition, my country's IPv6 ports have been slow to open, international bandwidth is insufficient, and foreign IPv6 services have not been implemented in China. This has not put much pressure on domestic content service providers, resulting in a serious lag in the migration of IPv6 on applications and websites.

my country begins to make efforts: in 5 to 10 years, the world's largest commercial IPv6 network will be built

However, the five points mentioned above are all being reversed, and quantitative targets have been clearly put forward. On November 26, 2017, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the "Action Plan for Promoting the Large-Scale Deployment of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)", which mentioned that it would take 5 to 10 years to form an independent technology system and industrial ecology for the next generation of Internet and build the world's largest IPv6 commercial application network.

Yesterday, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a notice on the implementation of the "Action Plan for Promoting Large-Scale Deployment of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)" (No. 47 of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology [2017], hereinafter referred to as the "Action Plan"). The notice elaborated on the implementation of IPv6 from six aspects.

The user targets for the three major operators are specified: by the end of 2018, the number of mobile Internet IPv6 users will be no less than 50 million (users who have been allocated IPv6 addresses by basic telecommunications companies and have IPv6 Internet access records within one year), of which China Telecom users will be no less than 10 million, China Mobile users will be no less than 10 million, and China Unicom users will be no less than 10 million.

At the same time, by the end of 2018, basic telecommunications companies will complete the IPv6 transformation of the nationwide LTE core network, access network, bearer network, business operation support system, etc. and enable IPv6 business bearer functions, allocate IPv6 addresses for mobile terminal user data services, and provide end-to-end IPv6 access channels.

In terms of terminals, mobile terminals and fixed terminals fully support IPv6: promote the factory default configuration of newly produced mobile terminals to support IPv4/IPv6 dual stack, and gradually promote the opening of IPv6 functions for existing mobile terminals through system software upgrades. Mobile terminals customized and centrally purchased by basic telecommunications enterprises should fully support IPv6; promote the support of IPv6 and default configuration of newly produced home gateways, enterprise gateways, routers and other fixed terminals, and the support of IPv4/IPv6 dual stack by default. Fixed terminals customized and centrally purchased by basic telecommunications enterprises should fully support IPv6.

In terms of backbone networks, by the end of 2018, the IPv6 transformation of Internet backbone direct connection points in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Zhengzhou and Chengdu will be completed, and the IPv6 network interconnection bandwidth will be opened to no less than 1Tbps. By the end of 2020, the IPv6 transformation of all Internet backbone direct connection points will be completed, and the IPv6 network interconnection bandwidth will be opened to no less than 5Tbps.

In addition, IPv6 transformation has been carried out for data centers, content distribution networks (CDNs), cloud service platforms, domain name systems, etc.

In particular, IPv6 transformation of government websites and IPv6 applications in the industrial Internet are also within the planning scope.

In response to concerns about network security, we have also strengthened IPv6 network security and implemented supporting protection measures.