According to the statistics of the national IPv6 development monitoring platform, the IPv6 share of China’s mobile network reached 50.08% in Feb. 2023, achieving a historic breakthrough for the first time that IPv6 traffic in mobile network exceeded IPv4 traffic, marking a new milestone in the promotion of IPv6 scale deployment and application in China.
All parties collaborate to comprehensively promote the scale deployment of IPv6 in China
As a globally recognized solution for next-generation Internet business applications, IPv6 is the inevitable trend of Internet upgrading and evolution, and an important direction for network technology innovation. It not only solves the problem of the number of network address resources and eliminates the barriers for multiple access devices to connect to the Internet, but also further improves network security. More importantly, strengthening IPv6 deployment is of great significance to the country's network security and network sovereignty.
The CPC Central Committee and the State Council have always attached great importance to IPv6 development, and in Nov. 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), which clearly puts forward the overall goal, roadmap, timetable and key tasks for the development of China's IPv6-based next-generation Internet in the next 5 to 10 years. This has become an action guide to accelerate the scale deployment of IPv6 in China and promote the evolution, upgrading and innovative development of the Internet.
Over the past six years, Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission , the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and all relevant departments have been working together to promote the full implementation of IPv6. In July 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission issued the Three-Year Special Action Plan for IPv6 Traffic Enhancement (2021-2023), proposing that the proportion of IPv6 traffic on mobile networks would exceed 50% and the scale of IPv6 traffic on fixed networks would reach more than three times that of the end of 2020, among other target tasks by the end of 2023. The Notice on Accelerating the Scale Deployment and Application of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) was immediately issued, proposing that China should fully establish a leading IPv6 technology, industry, facilities, applications, and security system by the end of 2025.
At the same time, basic telecommunication enterprises, equipment suppliers, Internet companies and end-users have been working closely with each other, and they have been working intensively on infrastructure upgrading, vertical industry application deployment, cutting-edge technology research and development, and talent training to promote the IPv6 network from being usable to being easy to use. All of these has achieved excellent results. China Telecom has made every effort to advance IPv6, and has carried out technical research, existing network pilot and large-scale deployment in an orderly manner. At present, China Telecom has built an end-to-end smooth IPv6 highway, and the IPv6 transformation of the cloud network end to network, cloud, terminal end is basically completed. China Mobile has taken advantage of the historical opportunity of mobile network replacement to break through the bottleneck of IPv6 development, promoting the simultaneous development of mobile network and IPv6 through "3G starting, 4G synchronization, 5G endogenous", and building the largest dual-stack network and the largest IPv6 single-stack network in the world in terms of user scale. IPv6 + 1.0 operation service was officially launched in Jan. 2022, marking China Unicom’s official entry into the "IPv6" era. Currently, China Unicom IPv6 + 1.0 has been deployed on a large scale to support the digital transformation of thousands of businesses and industries, providing strong impetus for the construction of a strong network and the growth of the digital economy.
Huawei is building IPv6 + innovation highlands from six directions including green ultra-wide, ubiquitous IoT, deterministic network, computing power network, self-driving network and network security. ZTE Corporation has been cooperating with the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Zijinshan Laboratory and basic telecommunication enterprises on the topic of "IPv6", and it is in a leading position in the industry in establishing standards and piloting new technologies in the fields of SRv6 and BIERIn6 multicast, fully supporting the technology implementation and scale deployment of the "IPv6+" system. Internet enterprises and CDN enterprises such as Ali Cloud, Jingdong Cloud and Wangsu continue to promote the transformation of cloud, IDC and CDN infrastructures and increase the support for IPv6 in related services. Enterprises such as ByteDance, Tencent, Baidu, Meituan, Qihoo 360 and Netease constantly strengthen the transformation of APPs and push forward the process of IPv6 in APP applications. Manufacturers such as Xiaomi, H3C and Tenda have increased their efforts to upgrade their IPv6 products for sale and research.
"The answer to the 'next generation Internet' is IPv6, which not only can solve the problem of network IP address depletion, but also has very far-reaching significance for China's scientific and technological innovation, network security, network sovereignty and discourse." Wu Jianping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, believes that.
The "highway" is "open for traffic"
The quality of IPv6 network and application is continuously improved
The fact that IPv6 traffic accounts for more than 50% of the total traffic not only shows that China's IPv6 network "highway" has been fully built and the IPv6 service capacity of information infrastructure is basically available, but also that opening up through traffic has become the status quo of the industry.
The foundation of IPv6 development lies in network construction and scale deployment, while the key to development lies in application. "In the current industrial promotion stage, it is urgent to actively promote new business applications based on IPv6. In terms of industrial development, industries with large data volume, high timeliness and integration difficulties, such as industry, agriculture, transportation and electricity, will become important deployment areas for IPv6." Liu Dong, director of National Engineering Center for Next Generation Internet, said.
Today, the quality of IPv6 networks and applications is constantly improving. Monitoring data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology shows that as of Feb. 2023, more than 95% of CDN nodes nationwide already support IPv6. Among cloud hosts in 54 available domains of 13 major domestic cloud service enterprises, IPv6 access quality is better than IPv4 access quality in 40 of them, accounting for 74.07%.
"IPv6 has entered an important strategic opportunity period for innovation and development, quality improvement and upgrading. The development of IPv6 and derived technologies, as well as the integration with new generation information technology, will fully meet the objective requirements for the continuous expansion of Internet resources and help the digital transformation of the whole society, which has also become the 'new track' for global Internet innovation. How to give full play to the IPv6 multiplier effect and strengthen the technical integration of IPv6 with various industries has become an important factor to seize the position of future pattern." Wenku, director of China Communications Standards Association, said.
As the scale deployment of IPv6 continues to deepen, promoting the IPv6 network from being usable to being easy to use and to being loved to use will become an important goal for China's IPv6 development in the next stage. Fully exploiting the advantages of IPv6 technology, stimulating the endogenous driving force of IPv6, carrying out IPv6 value enhancement and application innovation, accelerating the construction of industrial ecology, and promoting the scale deployment of IPv6 will be an important lever for China to move from a large network country to a strong network country.
