my country formulates new IPv6 blueprint to reach 700 million users within this year

"By the end of 2022, the number of active IPv6 users will reach 700 million, the number of IoT IPv6 connections 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%. "With the release of the "Work Arrangements for Deepening the Scale Deployment and Application of IPv6 in 2022", this document jointly issued by the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently proposed my country's latest annual IPv6 development goals. "China Business News" reporters noted that this is the second time that the government has formulated a blueprint for the promotion of IPv6 in my country after the three national ministries and commissions released the annual IPv6 planning document in 2021.

"Judging from the completion status in 2021, the goals set for 2022 are more realistic." Yang Guang, senior analyst of wireless operator strategy at Strategy Analytics, told reporters that at the end of 2021, all data indicators of my country's IPv6 exceeded the targets ahead of schedule, showing that with the joint efforts of all parties, the industry's advancement speed is much faster than expected.

Data released by the Cyberspace Administration of China show that as of the end of December 2021, the actual number of active IPv6 users in my country reached 608 million, the number of IoT IPv6 connections reached 140 million, the proportion of IPv6 traffic in fixed networks reached 9.38%, and the proportion of IPv6 traffic in mobile networks reached 35.15%.

With the launch of this year's "East Data West Computing" project and the "14th Five-Year Plan", Yang Guang believes that by the end of 2022, the scale of the IPv6 industry will expand rapidly, the industrial ecosystem will be further improved, various integrated applications will emerge at an accelerated pace, and the goals set this year will be completed ahead of schedule.

The development of IPv6 is imperative

IPv6 stands for Internet Protocol version 6. This protocol is the official rule for interconnection and communication between the global Internet. It is mainly responsible for assigning unique IP addresses to terminal devices connected to the Internet.

"To put it simply, if two devices on the Internet are understood as two people, then the IP address is more like the address for sending and receiving letters between the two people." An engineer from a telecom operator told reporters that the role of the IP protocol in a narrow sense is to give a device the number of IP addresses. Take the common "192.×××.×××.×××" IP address as an example. This is a typical four-segment IPv4, while IPv6 is a six-segment address, which is more than IPv4.

As for the reason for upgrading from IPv4 to IPv6, Zhou Guijun, editor-in-chief of c114 Communications Network, explained to reporters that due to the emergence of mobile phones and the Internet of Things, the number of devices connected to the global Internet has grown exponentially, while the IPv4 address resources that were born in the last century are facing exhaustion and cannot meet the access needs of more and more new users. Therefore, updating and transitioning to IPv6 as soon as possible is not only a consensus Internet development trend in my country but also in the world.

In addition to address capacity, Zhou Guijun said that IPv6 has made many technological advances and is much more secure than IPv4, and has better application maturity in the popular 5G and industrial Internet. "This is also an important reason why my country decided to vigorously develop IPv6."

According to Gai Gang, president of Huawei's ICT Strategy and Business Development Department, by 2030, the total number of connected devices in the world is expected to exceed 200 billion, the global IPv6 penetration rate will exceed 90%, the global per capita monthly wireless cellular network traffic will increase 40 times to 600GB, and the global Gigabit and 10 Gigabit home broadband network penetration rates will reach 55% and 23% respectively.

Against this backdrop, the world has accelerated its pace of deployment in the IPv6 field. Public statistics show that as of October 2021, the global IPv6 penetration rate has exceeded 37%, and the proportion of IPv6 users of global Internet giants such as Google and Facebook has exceeded 35% and 30% respectively.

Policy documents are being released at an accelerated pace

After a global IPv6 competition kicked off, my country has also accelerated the development of the IPv6 industry in recent years. Especially since 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)" in 2017, various policy documents with themes such as "IPv6 Network Readiness", "IPv6 End-to-End Connectivity", and "IPv6 Traffic Improvement" have been successively introduced, promoting the rapid maturity of my country's IPv6 industry.

Yang Guang pointed out that from the perspective of time, 2021 is the most critical year for the development of IPv6 in my country. At the beginning of the same year, the State Council clearly issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Digital Economy" aimed at promoting the large-scale deployment and application of IPv6. In July of the same year, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on Accelerating the Large-Scale Deployment and Application of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)".

In order to implement the policy, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially released the "Three-Year Special Action Plan for Improving IPv6 Traffic (2021-2023)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Three-Year Action Plan") in the same year, which proposed 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 industry believes that the release of this document marks that my country's IPv6 development has officially entered the "traffic improvement" era after key stages such as network readiness and end-to-end connectivity.

The reporter noticed that the "Three-Year Action Plan" proposes that by the end of 2021, the proportion of mobile network IPv6 traffic is expected to exceed 20%, and the scale of fixed network IPv6 traffic will increase by more than 20% compared with the end of 2020. By the end of 2023, the proportion of mobile network IPv6 traffic will exceed 50%, and the scale of fixed network IPv6 traffic will reach more than three times that of the end of 2020.

In addition, in November 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Information and Communication Industry", which clearly proposed that during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, it is necessary to enhance the end-to-end connectivity of IPv6, improve IPv6 network performance and service levels, and achieve double growth in IPv6 user scale and business traffic.

Driven by multiple policy documents, my country's IPv6 "traffic increase" has achieved remarkable results. At the 2021 China IPv6 Innovation and Development Conference held on October 11, 2021, Han Xia, chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, announced to the industry that my country's mobile network IPv6 traffic has grown from nothing to 22.87%, exceeding the annual target ahead of schedule. At the same time, the number of applied IPv6 address resources ranks first in the world, accounting for nearly one-fifth of the total number of allocated IPv6 addresses in the world.

Challenges remain

Although the achievements are remarkable, the challenges faced by the development of China's IPv6 industry are also extremely complex.

"The actual proportion of IPv6 traffic is still very limited, which is still a major dilemma in the current development of IPv6 in my country." Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, pointed out at the 2021 China Internet Industry Annual Conference that the main reason for this problem is that the upgrade and transformation of home gateways has not kept up. Wu Hequan pointed out that the next step is to upgrade the fixed network to a gigabit network, so that the fixed network gateway can have the function of a future home wireless gateway, and prepare for the direct application of IPv6 functions to the wireless gateway.

The Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission said that the test showed that some apps were still slow to upgrade and IPv6 traffic accounted for a low proportion. In this regard, Yang Guang told reporters that the application layer is generally the last link in the industrial chain, and the companies in the application field are not willing to transform. This is not only due to the cost of enterprise transformation, but also a manifestation of the lack of maturity of industrial development. "After the underlying IPv6 foundation is laid, application companies will face the result of being eliminated by the market if they do not adapt," Yang Guang said.

In addition, Wu Jianping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, has previously publicly pointed out that while IPv6 is developing vigorously in my country, special attention should be paid to security issues. Security issues are ultimately a core technology issue, and being controlled by others in core technology is the biggest hidden danger in the development of IPv6 in my country.

In this regard, the reporter noticed that in September 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on Strengthening and Standardizing Radio Management in the 2400MHz, 5100MHz and 5800MHz Frequency Bands", proposing to include the IPv6 support of home wireless routers in the radio model approval monitoring requirements, and to open up the "last 100 meters" of IPv6 traffic improvement terminal transformation.