Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Communication World Network News (CWW) as of August 2022, the number of IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) active users in China reached 713.7 million, accounting for 67.9% of the total Internet users, an increase of 29.5% over the same period last year, exceeding the global average growth level. Five years ago, IPv6 user penetration was less than 0.3 per cent. After 5 years of vigorous development, IPv6 continues to "grow" and has achieved fruitful results.

The IPv4 address is exhausted, and IPv6 "allows every grain of sand to be assigned to the IP address." when it comes to IPv6, you need to know the IP address first. IP address is an important basic resource of the Internet, and it is the basis of identification and data transmission of each system of the Internet. IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) supports the vigorous development of the Internet. The address length is 32 bits and can provide about 4 billion addresses.

With the popularity and wide application of the Internet, especially the vigorous development of mobile Internet, cloud computing, Internet of things and industrial Internet, the shortage of traditional IPv4 address resources is becoming increasingly serious. "4.3 billion IPv4 addresses around the world have been officially assigned." The European Network Information Coordination Center confirmed in an email on the evening of November 25, 2019 local time.

Fortunately, there is also IPv6. IPv6 can provide as many as 2 to the 128th power of addresses, which can "allocate every grain of sand in the world to an IP address" to comprehensively solve the problem of IP address exhaustion. A large number of IPv6 addresses provide a network foundation for the implementation of the Internet of everything. As small as the lives of ordinary people, the smart home devices of each family can be connected to the network separately to achieve more intelligent operations; as large as the operation of a city, the application of the Internet of things can make intelligent management more convenient and flexible.

The massive address of IPv6 relieves the pressure of address demand under the IPv4 system, and the significance of vigorously promoting IPv6 technology, products and applications is far more than this. Accelerating the large-scale deployment and application of IPv6 and building a high-speed, widely popularized, fully covered and intelligent next-generation Internet is of great significance to the construction of "network power" and "digital China".

In addition, strengthening the deployment of IPv6 is also of great significance to national cyber security and cyber sovereignty. Among the 25 IPv6 root servers set up in the world, 4 of them have been deployed in China, which breaks the dilemma that there is no root server in the IPv4 system in the past.

Relevant documents have been issued one after another, and the development of IPv6-scale deployment blueprint IPv6 is not achieved overnight. " China is the country that needs IPv6 most, and it is also one of the first countries in the world to carry out IPv6 and next-generation Internet technology research, standard-setting, application development and large-scale commercial use. But as of July 2017, IPv6 users accounted for about 56 per cent of Internet users, while the US accounted for more than 30 per cent, but China accounted for less than 0.3 per cent of IPv6. " Wu Hequan, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, made an urgent appeal at the 2017 industry conference.

The relevant departments of the state paid attention to the predicament of the development of IPv6 and quickly issued a number of policies to speed up the deployment of IPv6.

In November 2017, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council jointly issued the Action Plan for promoting the scale deployment of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) (referred to as "the Plan"), which clearly put forward the overall goal, roadmap, timetable and key tasks for the development of the next generation Internet based on IPv6 in the next five to ten years. It has become an action guide to accelerate the large-scale deployment of IPv6 and promote the evolution and upgrading of the Internet and the development of innovation.

In 2019, China issued the white paper "China's IPv6 Development status" and the "National IPv6 Development Monitoring platform"; set up a "IPv6+" technological innovation working group to clarify the "three-step" development strategy of "IPv6+" technology research and industrial practice.

In July 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Central Network Information Office jointly issued the "three-year Special Action Plan for IPv6 Traffic Enhancement (2021-2023)", which put forward quantitative targets in terms of network and application infrastructure service performance, IPv6 concentration of major commercial Internet applications, and the proportion of terminal devices supporting IPv6. The introduction of this plan marks that China's IPv6 development has formally entered the era of "traffic enhancement" after key stages such as network readiness and end-to-end connectivity.

In July 2021, the Central Internet Information Office, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Circular on accelerating the scale deployment and Application of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), which put forward the phased IPv6 development goals by the end of 2023 and by the end of 2025.

In November 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the 14th five-year Plan for the Development of the Information and Communication Industry, clearly proposing that during the 14th five-year Plan period, it is necessary to enhance the end-to-end connectivity of IPv6, improve the network performance and service level of IPv6, and realize the "double growth" of IPv6 users and business traffic, so as to promote the integrated development of IPv6 and AI, cloud computing, industrial Internet, IoT, etc., and carry out "IPv6+" innovation technology pilot and scale application in key industries. Enhance the ability of IPv6 network to support the digital transformation and upgrading of the industry.

In March 2022, the Central Internet Information Office, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Science and Technology and other 12 departments jointly issued the "IPv6 technological Innovation and Integration Application pilot list", accelerating the continuous breakthroughs in key technological innovation, application innovation, service innovation and management innovation of IPv6.

In April 2022, the Central Internet Information Office, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the work arrangement for further promoting the deployment and Application of IPv6 on a large scale in 2022, clearly setting out the work target for 2022: by the end of 2022, the number of IPv6 active users will reach 700 million, the number of IPv6 connections to the Internet of things will reach 180 million, the proportion of fixed network IPv6 traffic will reach 13%, and the proportion of mobile network IPv6 traffic will reach 45%.

Under the continuous promotion of a number of policies of relevant departments, China's IPv6 scale deployment has achieved remarkable results, and a number of IPv6 capabilities have stepped into the forefront of the world. As of July 2022, the number of IPv6 active users in China has reached 697 million; fixed network IPv6 traffic accounts for 10%, mobile network IPv6 traffic accounts for 40%, and the overall development momentum is good; the IPv6 support of major websites and Internet applications continues to increase; China's mobile network IPv6 traffic has exceeded 40% from scratch.

All parties have laid out one after another, and the IPv6 network "highway" has been completed in an all-round way. The scale deployment of IPv6 is a systematic project related to all aspects of the industrial chain, which requires the cooperation of operators, equipment vendors, Internet companies, end users and so on. In addition to being vigorously promoted by government departments, telecom operators represented by China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, equipment vendors represented by Huawei and ZTE, academic and research institutions represented by Tsinghua University and China ICT Institute, and Internet enterprises represented by Tencent and Ali are all actively promoting the development of IPv6 scale.

China Telecom has worked hard in the field of IPv6 for a long time and achieved remarkable results. China Telecom has comprehensively promoted the transformation of network infrastructure IPv6, providing IPv6 cloud network service capabilities with national coverage and excellent performance, and the comprehensive transformation of mobile network and fixed network equipment has been completed and turned on IPv6 to further improve the end-to-end network quality of IPv6. At present, China Telecom's IPv6 network performance is comparable to IPv4. Together with Tsinghua University and other units, China Telecom also put forward an overall plan of multi-domain IPv6 single-stack networking for large-scale networks, and jointly with international partners submitted a standard proposal to IETF, and actively carried out 5G SA IPv6 single-stack pilot and Internet of things single-stack pilot, to explore a landing plan for the comprehensive and rapid evolution of IPv4 to IPv6.

"since 2003, the IPv6 technology research has lasted for more than ten years, and the development of China Mobile IPv6 has changed from technical research to large-scale application." Cheng Weiqiang, director of the Institute of basic Network of China Mobile Research Institute, said. It is reported that China Mobile has built the world's largest dual-stack network and the largest IPv6 single-stack network. By the end of June 2022, the number of IPv6 addresses allocated in mobile networks has reached 772 million, while that in fixed networks has reached 169 million. Various products of bearer network, core network, IDC and mobile cloud have achieved 100% support for IPv6.

At present, China Unicom's newly built gigabit optical network and 5G network have simultaneously deployed the IPv6,4G network, and the fixed network has all been upgraded. In terms of optimizing application service performance of China Unicom, IDC, cloud platform and DNS have all completed IPv6 transformation, newly-built nodes all support IPv6; in improving terminal support capability, new home gateways, home intelligent networking products, Internet of things terminals, enterprise gateways, etc. all support IPv6; in expanding industry convergence applications, while the group's main portals, online windows and APP all fully support IPv6.

As the technology enabler of IPv6, Huawei has built the IPv6 + innovation highland from six directions: green ultra-wide, ubiquitous connection of things, deterministic network, computing network, autopilot network and network security.

ZTE Corporation has invested in research and development in the field of IPv6 for more than 20 years, and has carried out pre-research and production of IPv6 technology since 2000; in 2003, it exhibited IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack routers at the IPv6 Summit Forum for the first time; in 2004, it became the first equipment manufacturer in China to obtain "IPv6 Ready" certification; and in 2005, ZTE IPv6 series routers and switches began to operate in operator networks. Starting from 2019, ZTE Corporation has carried out in-depth cooperation with China Institute of Information and Communications, Zijinshan Lab and three major domestic operators on the "IPv6+" project, and is in the industry leading position in standard setting and new technology pilot in the field of SRv6 and BIERin6 multicast, fully supporting the technology landing and scale deployment of the "IPv6+" system.

Internet companies and CDN enterprises such as Aliyun, JD.com, Netcom Technology and CDN continue to promote the transformation of cloud, IDC, CDN and other infrastructure, and increase the support of related businesses for IPv6; byte beating, Tencent, Baidu, Meituan, Qihoo 360, NetEase and other enterprises continue to strengthen App transformation to enhance the concentration of App application IPv6; Xiaomi, Xinhua third, auspicious Tengda and other manufacturers to increase the IPv6 transformation of products for sale and research.

"from the perspective of supply capacity, China's IPv6 network 'highway' has been completed in an all-round way, and the IPv6 service capacity of the information infrastructure is basically available." Xie Cunzeng, director of the Department of Information and Communication Development of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said.

IPv6 application ecology accelerates the development of IPv6 on the basis of network construction and scale deployment, and the key to development lies in application. "in the current industrial promotion stage, it is urgent for the industry to actively promote new business applications based on IPv6. From the perspective of industrial development, industries such as industry, agriculture, transportation, power and other industries with large amount of data, high timeliness and difficult integration will become an important deployment field of IPv6." Liu Dong, director of the National Engineering Center of the next Generation Internet, said.

From the point of view of the application side, a number of benchmark enterprises are in a smooth transition to IPv6 business. For example, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China launched the first IPv6 internationalization portal as early as November 2017. Li Maoqian, an expert in financial technology at the head office of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, said: "the deployment of IPv6 has brought the improvement of operation and maintenance efficiency, network line utilization, traffic scheduling capacity and user experience for ICBC. Facing the future, ICBC will create an application-aware financial network with IPv6+' fine operation, strategy and security."

In order to promote the further prosperity and development of IPv6 applications, China Information and Communication Institute launched the "first IPv6 Technology Application Innovation Competition", which collected nearly 1500 project cases from 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government. The entries cover not only smart cities, smart government and other public services, but also applications in power, mining, transportation, industrial manufacturing and other industries. And smart home, smart finance, telemedicine, online education and other areas of livelihood.

"for some time in the future, we will vigorously lay out the next-generation Internet core infrastructure in both traditional and emerging industries to build a more prosperous IPv6 application ecology. On the one hand, strive to achieve the deep integration of the next generation Internet and vertical industries, as well as with artificial intelligence, big data, network security and other industries with the most potential for development; on the other hand, promote IPv6 and finance, education, health care, energy and other industries to carry out more extensive and in-depth integration and innovation, promote the innovative development of traditional formats and service models, and maximize productivity. " That's what Liu Dong said.

IPv6 is moving towards "IPv6+", giving full play to the IPv6 multiplier effect and accelerating the further development of IPv6 is the next key point. Xie Cun puts forward three suggestions: first, to consolidate the foundation, improve service capacity, and jointly promote the transformation of IPv6 in cloud, management, terminal, usage and other links; the second is to deepen the application, empower the development of the industry, and encourage the information and communication industry to carry out IPv6 collaborative innovation more widely and deeply with finance, education, health care, energy and other industries. Third, innovative breakthroughs, improve the industrial ecology, enhance the overall level of industrial development, strengthen IPv6 technology, standards, industries and other aspects of international cooperation, to achieve win-win cooperation and common development.

IPv6 has entered an important period of strategic opportunity for innovation and development, quality upgrading and upgrading. The development of IPv6 and derivative technology, as well as the integration with the new generation information technology, will fully meet the objective requirements of the continuous expansion of Internet resources, contribute to the digital transformation of the whole society, and have become a "new track" for global Internet innovation. How to give full play to the IPv6 multiplier effect and strengthen the technical integration of IPv6 and various industries has become an important weight to seize the position of the future pattern. " Wen Ku, chairman of the China Communications Standardization Association, said.

The development from IPv6 to "IPv6+" is a major trend. " From the perspective of technical connotation, IPv6+' is not only a network protocol innovation represented by IPv6 segmented routing, network slicing, flow detection, new multicast and application-aware network, but also an intelligent technological innovation represented by network intelligence, such as network analysis, automatic tuning and network self-healing. Through these technological innovations, we can better combine the application needs of IPv6 networks and industry users. Help the digital transformation of a thousand lines of industry. " Wei Xiaoqiang, Minister of bearing products and MKT programs of ZTE Corporation, said.

At present, China has carried out the exploration and practice of "IPv6+" and achieved relevant results. For example, China Unicom applied the "IPv6+" technology to the Winter Olympic Games, combined with the computing network architecture, carried out the design and construction of the comprehensive carrying network for the Winter Olympic Games, and realized the unified carrying of a variety of communication services, such as shared Internet, Internet dedicated line, "Media +" and so on. In the future, China Unicom will build "four pillars and eight pillars" based on "IPv6+" to form integrated computing network products and programmable service capabilities.

"tens of thousands of people exercise their bows, shoot one move together, and do everything they can." It is believed that with the concerted efforts of all parties in the industry, IPv6 will usher in a "new growth".

Timeline and important milestone of China's IPv6 Development in 2017, the process of large-scale deployment of IPv6 began in 2017. In November 2017, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the Action Plan for promoting the scale deployment of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). In the future, China will build the world's largest IPv6 business application network. This plan marks the beginning of the process of large-scale deployment of IPv6 in our country.

As of December 2017, China had 23430 IPv6 addresses (blocks / 32), an annual growth rate of 10.6%, and the total number of domain names was 38.48 million.

The annual growth rate of IPv6 addresses in 2018 is 75.3%. As of December 2018, the number of IPv6 addresses in China is 41079 (blocks / 32), with an annual growth rate of 75.3%.

The number of IPv6 addresses in China ranked first in the world in 2019. As of June 2019, the number of IPv6 addresses in China was 50286 (blocks / 32), an increase of 14.3% over the end of 2018, ranking first in the world. The number of IPv6 active users reached 130 million.

In 2020, the number of IPv6 active users reached 40.01%. As of July 2020, the number of IPv6 active users in China was 362 million, accounting for 40.01%. The top 100 commercial websites and applications in China have supported IPv6 access, with remarkable progress.

In 2021, the era of "traffic improvement" began in July 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Central Network Information Office jointly issued the "IPv6 Traffic Promotion three-year Special Action Plan (2021-2023)".

By the end of September 2021, the proportion of IPv6 traffic in China's mobile communication network has reached 22.87%, and the phased target of 20% has been completed ahead of schedule, indicating that the development of IPv6 in China has entered an era of "traffic enhancement".

By the end of December 2021, the number of IPv6 active users in China had reached 608 million, accounting for 60.11% of the total Internet users. China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom have completed the upgrading of the backbone network, metropolitan area network and LTE network IPv6, the new 5G network fully supports IPv6, and the backbone direct connections all achieve IPv6 interconnection. The proportion of mobile network IPv6 traffic in China increased to 35.15% from 17.21% at the end of 2020, and the proportion of fixed network IPv6 traffic increased to 9.38% from 4.3% at the end of 2020, both of which doubled year-on-year growth and exceeded the target.

In March 2022, 12 departments, including the Central Network Information Office, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology, jointly issued the pilot list of IPv6 technological Innovation and Integrated applications, accelerating the continuous breakthroughs in key technological innovation, application innovation, service innovation and management innovation of IPv6.

As of July 2022, the number of IPv6 active users in China has reached 697 million, with fixed network IPv6 traffic accounting for 10% and mobile network IPv6 traffic accounting for 40%. The overall development momentum is good.

In July 2022, the first IPv6 Technology Application Innovation Competition was launched. Nearly 1500 project cases were collected in the competition, including public services such as smart city and smart government, as well as power, mining, transportation, industrial manufacturing and other industries, as well as smart home, smart finance, telemedicine, online education and other areas of concern about people's livelihood. IPv6 application shows a hundred flowers blossom and prosperity and development.

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