To get rid of the embarrassment, my country needs a "devil's pace" to accelerate IPv6

Artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things are all closely related to our future lives. However, the infrastructure for all of these is IPv6. Only with it can we build the next era we imagine. However, the road of IPv6 in China is extremely embarrassing. In the past 20 years of development, IPv6 has been repeatedly mentioned by people, but it has been constantly submerged and forgotten.

Recently, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the "Action Plan for Promoting Large-Scale Deployment of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)", which officially ended the embarrassment of IPv6. From "standing still" for 20 years to "leading the world", if China's IPv6 wants to accelerate, it must have the "devil's pace", which is certainly not as simple as "friction, friction", but a gradual leap.

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The future is here! In order to make the "devil's pace" more powerful, the Next Generation Internet National Engineering Center has taken action, setting up the first IPv6 root server in China and providing DNS services to the public free of charge.

The past is unbearable: my country's IPv6 "got up early but caught up late"

The TCP/IP protocol is the cornerstone of the development of the Internet, of which IP is the network layer protocol that regulates the exchange and routing of packet information on the Internet. The IPv4 protocol address currently used is 32 bits long, and the total number of approximately 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses has been allocated.

At that time, "4 billion spaces were already very large. Unexpectedly, with the rapid development of the Internet, people began to realize that this order of magnitude could not meet the needs of the rapid development of the Internet," said Wu Jianping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor at Tsinghua University.

In order to correct the shortcomings of IPv4, IPv6 is expected to have great success. "The address space of IPv6 is expanded to 2 to the 128th power. This space is unimaginably large, that is, every square meter on the earth can have 10 to the 26th power of addresses, and even addresses can be allocated to dust in the air," said Wu Jianping.

For the construction of the Internet of Things, which aims to connect everything, this means that all objects that want to connect to the Internet can be assigned IP addresses. It can be said that IPv6 will become a key project for the next generation of human intelligent life.

Dr. Vinton Cerf, co-developer of the TCP/IP protocol and known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," said: "IPv4 is an experimental network, and IPv6 network is the only way for future development."

However, IPv6, the only way to the future, has been "early rise and late arrival" in China!

Data shows that in terms of the proportion of IPv6 users, the United States ranks third and Belgium ranks first, with the proportion of both reaching 30% to 50%. Japan also has 15% of users, and India, which has relatively backward infrastructure, also has 11% of users. China ranks 52nd with only 7% of users.

"As of the end of June this year, the number of our fixed-line Internet users was 751 million and the number of mobile Internet users was 724 million, but there were only 338.45 million IPv4 addresses in our country. The average number of IPv4 addresses per fixed-line Internet user is 0.45, less than half," said Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Wu Hequan pointed out, "In fact, China is the country that needs IPv6 the most. It is also one of the first countries in the world to carry out research, standard setting, application development and large-scale commercial use of IPv6 and next-generation Internet technology. It pioneered pure IPv6 and built the world's largest IPv6 network at that time. However, as of July this year, data shows that the proportion of IPv6 users to Internet users has reached about 56%, and the United States has also reached more than 30%. China is the country that needs IPv6 the most, but China's IPv6 accounts for less than 0.3%."

Talking about why my country started IPv6 development very early but arrived late, Wu Hequan analyzed five major reasons: falling into the trap of private addresses and being unable to extricate oneself; lack of clear market orientation and government awareness of application priority; serious lag in the migration of applications and websites to IPv6; some misunderstandings and interferences affecting the implementation of the national IPv6 development strategy; opposing IPv6 to network security, and excessive concern about the difficulty of IPv6 content transition and indecision.

Accelerating now: Need "devil's pace"

In 1998, CERNET (China Education and Research Network) first introduced IPv6 in China. In fact, the development of IPv6 in China has been nearly 20 years. During this period, IPv6 has been mentioned repeatedly, but it has been constantly drowned out and forgotten.

Recently, the General Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the "Action Plan for Promoting Large-Scale Deployment of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)" (hereinafter referred to as the Plan). This government document officially ended the embarrassing situation of IPv6.

The plan proposes to take 5 to 10 years to form an independent technology system and industrial ecology for the next generation Internet, build the world's largest IPv6 commercial application network, achieve deep integration and application of the next generation Internet in various economic and social fields, and become an important leading force in the development of the next generation Internet in the world.

At the same time, the plan proposes that by the end of 2018, the number of active IPv6 users in China will reach 200 million, accounting for no less than 20% of Internet users, and the top 50 commercial websites in China will fully support IPv6; by the end of 2020, the number of active IPv6 users will exceed 500 million; by the end of 2025, networks, applications, and terminals will fully support IPv6.

From "catching up late" to "taking the lead in all aspects", if China's IPv6 wants to accelerate, it must have the "devil's pace". Of course, it is not as simple as "friction, friction", but a gradual leap.

"By the end of next year, a benign ideological driving environment must be formed. The number of active IPv6 users must reach 200 million, accounting for no less than 20% of Internet users. By the end of 2020, the number of active IPv6 users must exceed 500 million, accounting for more than 50%, and new network addresses will no longer be allowed to use private IPv4 addresses. By the end of 2025, our country's IPv6 network scale, user scale, and traffic scale will rank first in the world, network application terminals will fully support IPv6, and the smooth evolution and upgrade to the next generation of the Internet will be fully completed, forming a world-leading next-generation Internet technology industry system."

Liu Dong, director of the National Engineering Center for Next Generation Internet, said in an interview that the national policy on the overall deployment of IPv6 has been made clear, and the most important thing is that all sectors of the industry should stop "waiting and watching". "IPv6 is not a cost for enterprises, but an investment that will bring benefits. IPv6 is closely related to the application of big data, the Internet of Things, and cloud computing. If enterprises do not follow the trend now, they may lose the development opportunity."

Among the key tasks from 2017 to 2018, the plan clearly proposes to carry out the construction of end-to-end IPv6 service carrying capacity of LTE network, promote the full support of IPv6 in LTE network, services and terminals, and the scale of mobile Internet IPv6 users shall not be less than 50 million. In addition, it also involves the interconnection of backbone network IPv6, transformation of metropolitan area network and access network, and IPv6 upgrade of content distribution network and cloud service platform.

Regarding the principles of IPv6 development, Wu Hequan put forward four suggestions: First, overall planning and key breakthroughs should be made to make up for the shortcomings of IPv6 applications and achieve the coordinated promotion of technology, industry and network applications. Second, government guidance and enterprise leadership should be strengthened to strengthen government coordination, support and application guidance, optimize the development environment, emphasize the role of enterprises in IPv6, and stimulate market demand and the endogenous motivation of enterprises. Third, innovative development should ensure security and promote development and security at the same time. Fourth, focus on the market and gather people's livelihood, so that the development of the Internet can gather hundreds of millions of people.

The future has arrived: the "double swords" have been unsheathed

Artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things are actually closely related to our future lives, but the infrastructure for all of this is IPv6. Only with it can we build the next era we imagine. Similarly, to achieve these, we must become co-builders, not just users.

The large-scale deployment of IPv6 first requires the support of network equipment and software, including routers, switches, servers, etc.; secondly, infrastructure transformation, including data centers (IDCs), content distribution networks (CDNs), etc.; finally, Internet content service providers, including apps, also need to support IPv6. Among them, in addition to powerful Internet giants such as BAT, some small and medium-sized Internet companies also need third-party solution companies to provide IPv6 conversion solutions, which contains a lot of business opportunities.

Previously, in the Next Generation Internet Demonstration Project (CNGI), operators, equipment manufacturers, and application service providers participated on a large scale, which played a relatively good role in verifying the evolution from IPv4 to IPv6. In order to promote the development of IPv6, the Next Generation Internet National Engineering Center took action and set up the IPv6 root server for the first time in China, and provided DNS services to the public free of charge.

In the development of the Internet, root servers, or root domain name servers, play an important role. They are mainly used to manage the main directory of the Internet and are called the "central nervous system" of the Internet.

The "Snowman Project" initiated by the National Next Generation Internet Engineering Center has completed the installation of 25 IPv6 root servers around the world, of which 1 main root server and 3 auxiliary root servers are located in China, breaking the situation in which my country had no root servers in the past.

The latest statistics show that as of August 2017, 25 IPv6 root servers have received a total of 2,391 queries from recursive servers worldwide, mainly in Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific region, which to some extent reflects the global IPv6 network deployment and user development. In terms of traffic, the IPv6 root servers receive nearly 120 million queries per day.

As an important part of network infrastructure, the Domain Name System (DNS) has been frequently attacked in the past 30 years due to its "speciality". Top-level domain failures, DNS hijacking, large-scale DNS attacks and other incidents have occurred from time to time, bringing serious impacts to the global Internet industry. At present, most public DNSs that improve user experience and ensure network security are only for IPv4, which is also one of the problems that IPv6 users continue to criticize.

In addition, to fully support the development of IPv6, the Next Generation Internet Engineering Center provides free DNS services to the public based on its independently developed high-performance IPv6 DNS system, with the preferred DNS: 240c::6666 and the backup DNS: 240c::6644. The IPv6 public DNS launched this time guarantees the efficiency and stability of the IPv6 network with the three characteristics of accuracy, speed, security and stability, and DNS64.

According to reports, the engineering center has deployed recursive nodes in many regions around the world, including Beijing, Guangzhou, Lanzhou, Wuhan, Chicago, Fremont, London, and Frankfurt. Deployment based on IPv6 BGP Anycast allows users to access the nearest domain, significantly reducing the access delay when resolving domain names to the root server, and providing important guarantees in terms of speed. In addition, IPv6 public DNS will reduce the recursive process by actively synchronizing com/net domain names, caching hotspot domain names, and other measures to achieve the fastest response to the greatest extent possible.

In terms of security, IPv6 public DNS supports single IP resolution speed limit, which can effectively intercept malicious attacks, etc., and the user's access security will be protected in real time. At the same time, IPv6 public DNS supports DNSSEC security resolution verification, and users will not be hijacked during the access process, and there will be no malicious jumps or mandatory advertisements.

At the same time, in order to facilitate the actual needs of IPv6 users to access IPv4 related services, the IPv6 public DNS has specially launched the DNS64 resolution service, that is, through this resolution system, it can also respond to the resolution requests of pure IPv6 users for pure IPv4 network resources. This also avoids to a certain extent the trouble brought about by the transition period from IPv4 to IPv6 that the content has not been fully transformed and upgraded.

Liu Dong said, "Early and rapid development of IPv6 networks is a key measure for my country to strive for the initiative in the global Internet. The construction and improvement of public infrastructure is a prerequisite for the large-scale deployment of IPv6. This free global IPv6 public DNS service not only provides global IPv6 users with a faster and more secure option, but also hopefully promotes my country's comprehensive promotion of IPv6 next-generation Internet deployment."