The three major operators are busy deploying IPV6, and the scale of the Internet of Things will exceed 500 billion

IPv6 was officially launched worldwide yesterday - the next generation Internet based on IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6). It is said that IPv6 can assign an IP address to every grain of sand on the earth. Once IPv6 is fully commercialized, the exhaustion of IP addresses will be completely solved.

　　Massive addresses are the foundation for the in-depth development of mobile Internet, Internet of Things and other applications in the future. "Once we have more IP addresses, we can connect all the printers, routers and TVs at home, because each device has an IP address, and you can manage them very conveniently." Xiang Ligang, CEO of Feixiang.com, said, "Maybe one day, all the devices in our home, such as refrigerators, curtains and air conditioners, will be managed through a network system."

　　The three major operators have all begun to deploy IPv6. It is expected that with the support of the next-generation Internet based on IPv6, the scale of my country's Internet of Things industry will exceed 500 billion yuan by 2015.

　　Operators deploy IPv6

　　With the IP v6-based smart home gateway and service platform, you can control home lights, curtains, air conditioners, stereos, TVs and other electrical appliances through remote controls, mobile phones or PCs. IPv6 is used for home area defense. Once a stranger enters the room, you can automatically receive SMS and MMS messages at the first time. You can also enjoy video intercom, real-time video monitoring, audio and video entertainment and other services based on IP v6 technology...

　　These are not the distant future. At last year's Shenzhen Universiade, the "Intelligent Universiade Village" built by China Telecom (Weibo) allowed athletes around the world to be the first to experience the charm of the next generation of the Internet.

　　Operators are considered to be the main force driving the large-scale commercial use of IPv6. A person related to the China Telecommunication Research Institute revealed that China Telecom will add new provinces and cities to start Internet infrastructure transformation this year based on the pilot projects in Changsha, Hunan, Wuxi, Jiangsu and other places, with the goal of developing 3 million users.

　　China Unicom (Weibo) plans to invest 800 million yuan to comprehensively promote the next-generation Internet industry at multiple levels, including terminals, access networks, metropolitan area networks, core networks, business platforms and industry applications, and to achieve no less than 3 million IPv6 broadband access users by the end of 2013.

　　Li Zhengmao, vice president of China Mobile, said yesterday that China Mobile plans to achieve full application of IPv6 within five years. "This year and next year will be a large-scale trial phase. We will start network transformation in about 10 provinces, launch a variety of L TEIP v6 terminals, transform four business bases and more than 10 self-owned business platforms, and develop 3 million IPv6 users."

　　Shenzhen is one of the pilot units for China Mobile's IP v6 network transformation, and plans to complete the construction of a trial commercial network within this year. The network development goal is to "build an IP v6-based fixed broadband access network in Shenzhen and transform the existing network to support IPv6 access for 2G and TD mobile terminals."

　　Exhausted Address

　　In February last year, the last batch of IPv4 addresses were allocated. Vinton Cerf, the "Father of the Internet," said with emotion, "I thought it was just an experiment, and 4.3 billion IP addresses were enough for the experiment." He said, "Who knows how much space is needed?"

　　my country has only 330 million IP v4 addresses, less than one per Internet user. By the end of last year, the number of Internet users in my country had reached 513 million. "Some provinces of China Telecom have already experienced a shortage of IPv4 addresses," said Zhang Jiping, deputy general manager of China Telecom, yesterday.

　　According to a research report from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Telecommunication Research Institute, in the next five years, China's demand for mobile Internet IP addresses will be 1 billion, the Internet of Things demand will be 10 billion, and the fixed Internet demand will be 500 million. The total demand for IP addresses will be as high as 34.5 billion. The existing IP v4 addresses are far from meeting the development of the network, and the development of IPv6 is imminent.

　　In March this year, the "Opinions on the Development of the Next Generation Internet during the 12th Five-Year Plan Period" was issued, which clearly put forward the key goals and tasks for the development of China's IPv6 during the 12th Five-Year Plan period, namely, before the end of 2013, a small-scale commercial pilot of IPv6 networks will be carried out to form a mature business model and technology evolution route. From 2014 to 2015, the Internet penetration rate will reach more than 45%, the integration of the three networks will be promoted, the number of IPv6 broadband access users will exceed 25 million, and the interoperability of IPv4 and IPv6 mainstream services will be achieved. The "Opinions" are considered to be the roadmap and timetable for the next stage of IPv6.

8 billion special development funds

　　In order to accelerate the construction of IPv6, the National Development and Reform Commission announced that it would set aside 8 billion yuan as special funds for the development of the next generation Internet.

　　According to people familiar with the project, the "industrialization project" focuses on the fields of petroleum and petrochemicals, transportation, electricity, security, etc. Most of the funds will be invested in network construction, including line and equipment transformation, and the possibility of subsequent additions is not ruled out. The IPv6 upgrade and transformation of commercial websites will also receive special support.

　　The NDRC hopes to achieve the goal of supporting IPv6 on backbone networks and about 10% of metropolitan area networks and having more than 8 million IPv6 broadband access users in the next two years through the organization, implementation and promotion of the 2012 special project.

　　Zhang Jianning, Secretary-General of the Zhongguancun Internet of Things Industry Alliance, pointed out that the core roadmap for the development of IPv6 is the backbone network transformation of telecom operators, followed by the upgrade of network CPs and content providers, and then the innovation of business models that combine cloud computing and the Internet of Things.

　　"Current Apple, Android systems, Win7, etc. all support IPv6, which provides a good foundation for business innovation. In terms of network resource transformation, many equipment manufacturers already have technology and product reserves."

　　The reporter learned that the entire product line of mainstream equipment manufacturers such as Huawei and ZTE already supports IPv6 and will be available quickly once the market is launched. Many software manufacturers and Internet service providers, represented by Microsoft, have also made preparations for IPv6. For example, Windows 7 system has realized support for IPv6 protocol, Tencent's QQ software has also provided an IPv6-supported version, and Baidu's search engine has also opened a special IPv6 website.

　　In Zhang Jianning's view, the development of IPv6 is an opportunity for the entire industry. "First, equipment vendors, such as Huawei, ZTE, and Digital China, but this opportunity is short-lived, and in the end it's a competition of price and scale. When IPv6 is combined with the Internet of Things and mobile Internet, more new business opportunities will be generated, especially opportunities for new operating services combined with traditional industries, such as mobile e-commerce and the Internet of Things service industry. IPv6 will provide them with a larger address space, high bandwidth, better network quality and security."

　　Dilemma of business model

　　But there is still confusion.

　　"The 8 billion yuan in state subsidies is far from enough, because all the operators' servers must be covered by IPv6. This requires a continuous investment of at least tens of billions to migrate IP v4 to IP v6. Even after IP v6 is developed, we will definitely have to continue to invest funds." Xiang Ligang, CEO of Feixiang.com, said frankly that on the one hand there is a huge investment, and on the other hand there is a lack of business model and insufficient motivation from all parties.

　　One operator stated that its IPv6 business development goal is to "take broadband access as the main body, gradually explore reasonable operation models during business development, and expand IPv6-related applications." This means that the operators themselves are still in the process of exploring how to generate benefits from their huge investment in IPv6 construction.

　　In addition to operators, ICP/ISP (Internet content providers/Internet service providers) also believe that IPv6 has little to do with them and has no business model; and end users cannot feel the difference between IPv6 and IPv4 - just like the increase in telephone numbers from 4 digits to 8 digits, for consumers it is just 4 more numbers; and they will not pay attention to whether there is an extra string of characters after the IP address.

　　"Just as social applications have driven the development of 3G networks, we now also need 'killer' applications to reflect the security, online, flexible and scalable characteristics of IPv6," said Lu Guoqiang, deputy director of H3C's solution department.

　　IPv6 Technology Advantages

　　1. Address resources are almost unlimited

　　Compared with IPv4, the most intuitive technical advantage of IPv6 is that it can provide almost unlimited address resources. The address length of IPv6 is 128 bits, and the address space is increased by 2 to the 96th power. Therefore, IPv6 can provide more network addresses for current and future Internet applications. It can increase about 340 trillion IPv6 network addresses on the basis of the current 4 billion IPv4 network addresses.

　　2. More conducive to the Internet of Things

　　The unlimited abundance of IP v6 addresses means that in the human world, every item can be assigned an independent IP address. It is for this reason that the application of IPv6 technology will allow the information age to move from human-machine dialogue to the era of machine-machine interconnection, making the Internet of Things a reality. Due to the huge number of addresses, even a grain of sand can have its IP address. This means that all furniture, televisions, cameras, mobile phones, computers, cars...all can be included as part of the Internet.

　　3. Further improvement of network security

　　At present, viruses and Internet worms are the most troublesome network attacks. However, this propagation method is no longer applicable in IPv6 networks, because the IPv6 address space is too large. If these viruses or worms want to find other hosts that can be attacked by scanning the address segment, it is like looking for a needle in a haystack. In the IPv6 world, it is impossible to conduct network reconnaissance on IPv6 networks according to IP address segments like IPv4.

　　4. Online real-name management is more feasible

　　Another important application of IPv6 is the Internet ID card under the network real-name system. One of the important reasons why it is difficult to implement the network real-name system on the current IPv4-based network is because of the sharing of IP resources. Because IP resources are insufficient, different people share an IP in different time periods, and IP and Internet users cannot be matched one to one. However, the emergence of IPv6 can solve the problem of real-name system once and for all from a technical perspective, because IP resources will no longer be tight, and operators will have enough IP resources. When accepting network access applications, operators can directly assign a fixed IP address to the user, which actually realizes the real-name system, that is, a one-to-one correspondence between a real user and an IP address.