The Register has picked up a story about China’s adoption of IPv6. This article originally came from the Xinhua state news agency. (China to speed up IPv6-based Internet development).
China feels the lack of IPv4 address space most keenly. They have the worlds largest population by country, at 1.4 billion people. They have a vast country, covering 9.3mn km² (3.6mn square miles). This combination means that the Internet is crucial for them to connect producers and customers. And the way to deal with the lack of IPv4 addresses is to deliver an IPv6 internet.
They aim to have 200mn active IPv6 internet users by the end of 2018 and exceed 500mn by the end of 2020. The general offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council have issued an action plan to deliver these targets. The first bit is relatively easy, as this is typically IPv6 enablement of existing infrastructure. Thier next goal, however, is more ambitious; network, applications and terminal devices will fully support the adoption of IPv6 in China by the end of 2025. They aim to have the most extensive IPv6 user base in the world by then.
The bit that drew The Register’s attention is the line at the bottom of the article. The Register believes this reads that China invented the Internet. My reading is more generous than theirs. While America developed IPv6 from 1995, China has been growing IPv6 infrastructure since then.
The IPv6 network, first developed in the 1990s in China, allows a much higher theoretical limit on the number of IP addresses than the current IPv4 system.
Source: TheRegister (China plots Great Leap Forward: to IPv6)
