撰写In recent years, the global construction of the next generation Internet based on IPv6 has entered a stage of rapid development, and the penetration rate of IPv6 users and network traffic have been continuously improved.
Since November 2017, China issued the Action Plan for Promoting the Scale Deployment of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), government departments have actively promoted the implementation, and all links in the industrial chain have worked together closely. After pioneering in 2018 and 2019, China’s IPv6 development has overcome many difficulties in terms of applications, network infrastructure, application infrastructure, terminals, basic resources, number of users and traffic.
First, the upgrading of key websites and IPv6 applications has been further accelerated.
Provincial and ministerial governments and central enterprise portals give full play to their exemplary and leading roles. By January 2020, 79 of the 91 provincial and ministerial government websites in China supported IPv6, accounting for 87%. 86 of the 96 central enterprise portals support IPv6, accounting for 89%.
China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom give full play to their own advantages. In 2019, in addition to completing the IPv6 transformation of portal websites and online business halls, they also completed the IPv6 deep transformation of the top 10 mobile Internet applications (apps) such as handheld business halls and mailboxes. According to the latest monitoring data, the average IPv6 traffic of 30 self-operated mobile Internet applications in basic telecom enterprises accounted for more than 71%.
Typical commercial websites and applications actively and steadily promote IPv6 upgrade and accelerate the user transformation.In 2019, while continuing to promote the transformation of commercial websites and applications with the top 50 users, we will further expand the scope of Internet application transformation by "point to area".
On the one hand, it puts forward higher requirements on the "depth" of the transformation of Top 50 commercial websites and applications that have been upgraded and upgraded in 2018, further realizes the support of deep links and core businesses for IPv6, and strives to increase the proportion of IPv6 traffic;
On the other hand, we will expand the scope of transformation from Top 50 to Top 100, accelerate the progress of IPv6 transformation, testing and large-scale launch of Top 100 Internet applications, and guide more Internet applications and users to migrate to IPv6.
As of January 2020, among the top 100 commercial websites and mobile applications in China, there are 79 models that can be accessed through IPv6, covering 10 mainstream Internet applications such as news, social networking, video, e-commerce and life services.Among them, 21 apps accounted for more than 30% of IPv6 active users, and 36 apps accounted for more than 15% of IPv6 traffic.
Figure 1 Commercial websites and applications supporting IPv6
Second, the network infrastructure fully supports IPv6.
The upgrade of LTE network and fixed network IPv6 has been completed. China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom have all completed the IPv6 transformation of LTE networks and metropolitan area networks in 30 provinces across the country, and fully opened IPv6 services for 4G network users, with the ability to provide fixed broadband IPv6 services, and are gradually improving the opening process of IPv6 private line products, opening IPv6 private line access for government and enterprise customers in need and supporting the allocation of IPv6 addresses.
The backbone direct connection point realizes IPv6 interconnection. In 2019, eight Internet backbone direct connection points in Wuhan, Xi ‘an, Shenyang, Nanjing, Chongqing, Hangzhou, Guiyang, Gui ‘an and Fuzhou all completed IPv6 upgrade and transformation, supporting IPv6 traffic exchange between Internet. Together with the five backbone direct connection points in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Zhengzhou and Chengdu completed in 2018, all 13 backbone direct connection points in China have completed IPv6 transformation.
The quality of IPv6 network is basically the same as that of IPv4. China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom and other basic telecom enterprises focus on the quality of IPv6 networks within and between networks, and continue to carry out related work such as link optimization and equipment transformation of IPv6 network quality, so as to effectively improve the quality of IPv6 networks. At present, the quality of IPv6 network is basically the same as that of IPv4. The average inter-network delay of IPv6 network is 40.70ms, and the average inter-network packet loss rate is 0.11%. The average intra-network delay is 33.96ms, and the average intra-network packet loss rate is 0.02%, which is basically similar to the IPv4 network.
III. Positive progress has been made in upgrading the application infrastructure IPv6.
IDC, the basic telecom enterprise, has completely upgraded IPv6. China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom and other basic telecom enterprises have completed the IPv6 transformation of all 907 super-large, large, medium and small data centers, and installed IDC monitoring programs, and the support rate has increased from the initial 25% to 100%.
The IPv6 support capability of CDN resources continues to improve. Major CDN companies such as NetScience, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Lanxun, Jinshanyun, Century Internet, UCloud, Bai Shanyun, Qiniuyun and China Mobile have more than 3,195 nodes supporting IPv6. According to the calculation of provincial administrative divisions, the national coverage capacity of IPv6 is over 99%, and the local coverage capacity of IPv6 is over 85% of that of IPv4, which basically has the ability to accelerate the distribution of IPv6, but the service scope and bandwidth need to be improved.
Cloud products have initially acquired IPv6 service capabilities. Alibaba Cloud, Tianyiyun, Tencent Cloud, Wo Yun, Huawei Cloud, Mobile Cloud, Baidu Cloud, Jinshan Cloud, jingdong cloud, UCloud, Qingyun and other cloud service enterprises have completed the dual-stack transformation of public cloud products such as IPv6 cloud hosting, load balancing, content distribution, domain name resolution, cloud desktop, object storage, cloud database, API gateway, Web application firewall, DDOS high defense and elastic IPS, and public cloud products.
Table 1 IPv6 support of some cloud service enterprises
The monitoring and analysis capability of IPv6 development has been significantly improved. The national IPv6 development monitoring platform was put into operation in 2018, and carried out monitoring and analysis on key development indicators such as network, application, terminal, users and traffic. In July 2019, the white paper "The Development of IPv6 in China" was released for the first time, and the website of the monitoring platform (www.china-ipv6.cn) was opened to the public, which attracted wide attention.
Fourth, the terminal IPv6 transformation continued to accelerate.
Network devices and mainstream mobile terminals in the market have supported IPv6. Manufacturers, mobile terminals and manufacturers of communication equipment have accelerated the iterative upgrade of their products, and the support of IPv6 for network equipment and terminal equipment has also been greatly improved. In 2019, all new mobile terminals in the market have been configured to support IPv4/IPv6 dual stack by default.
The IPv6 support of fixed terminals continues to improve. The smart home gateways allocated by basic telecom enterprises for new broadband users have all supported IPv6. In 2019, the upgrading of existing equipment of old customers will be accelerated. At present, the average IPv6 support rate of smart home gateways of three basic telecom enterprises has reached over 78%. Home router terminals purchased by individuals are objectively faced with practical problems such as a wide range of renovation, various brands and models, scattered market share, long upgrade period, etc., and their support for IPv6 is low, which hinders the transformation of home broadband IPv6 users and affects the transformation effect of fixed networks.
V key development indicators such as IPv6 active users and traffic have increased significantly.
The number of IPv6 address applications is among the highest in the world. In recent years, the number of IPv6 addresses in China has increased steadily. As of January 2020, China has applied for 47,851 (/32)IPv6 addresses, ranking second in the world. The number of IPv6 addresses can meet the current development needs, and the demand for IPv6 addresses such as Internet of Things and industrial Internet will still grow rapidly in the future.
The number of IPv6 active users has greatly increased. By January 2020, the number of active users of IPv6 in China reached 270 million, accounting for 31% of the total number of Internet users, which was nearly 100 times higher than before the implementation of the action plan. There are 1.193 billion LTE users and 199 million fixed network users in China, and a total of 1.392 billion users have obtained IPv6 addresses.
Figure 2 Obtaining the number of users with IPv6 addresses and the number of IPv6 active connections.
IPv6 network traffic is growing rapidly. As of January 2020, the inflow and outflow of IPv6 in China’s metropolitan area network were 1679.18Gbps and 960.24Gbps； respectively. IPv6 inflow traffic and outflow traffic of LTE core network are 1656.08Gbps and 205.31Gbps； respectively. The total IPv6 traffic of backbone direct connection point is 251.34Gbps；;
The inflow and outflow of international gateway IPv6 are 66.20Gbps and 32.01Gbps, respectively. On the whole, the inflow of IPv6 in MAN, the inflow of IPv6 in LTE core network and the total flow of IPv6 in backbone direct connection point all increased by more than 3 times year-on-year.
Figure 3 Inflow flow of IPv6 in MAN, LTE network and international gateway & total flow of IPv6 in backbone direct connection point.
2020 is the closing year of the second phase of the action plan. China’s IPv6 scale deployment will further improve quality and efficiency, focus on weak links to expand the breadth and depth of IPv6 transformation, promote integration and innovation to expand the scope of IPv6 application promotion, and promote the construction of a high-speed, wide-spread, full-coverage and intelligent next-generation Internet, which will provide strong support for economic and social development.
