Will China Be the First Nation to Run Out of IP Addresses?

Jerry Sheehan — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:28:01 -0700

Description

Back in 2004, there was a great deal of fanfare about the early adoption of IPv6 by China. The Chinese Education and Research Network Information Center (CERNIC) was at the center of IPv6 adoption efforts and created CERNET2. CERNET2 provides IPv6 services to 25 universities in 20 cities in China.[1] CERNET2 received a fair amount of press at the time with some arguing that this early embrace of the new protocol could lead to a competitive economic advantage. These views were reinforced by Chinese officials who identified the nature and importance of the problem. Zhao Houlin, Director of the International Telecommunications Union noted, "When 26 Chinese share one Internet protocol address, while each American possesses six IP addresses…this is the quandary facing China in the IPv4 era." His colleague Jiang Linta, Chief Engineer of the China Academy of Telecommunications Research, came to an even more stark conclusion "We cannot survive without IPv6."[2] Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the protocol, apparently they stopped with CERNET2. On September 23, 2008 the China Internet Network Information Center sounded an alarm that they only had roughly 830 more days worth of IPv4 address resources at current growth rates. As ChinaTechNews.Com reported "Li Kai, director in charge of the IP business for CNNIC's international department, says that if a netizen wants to get access to the Internet, an IP address will be necessary to analyze the domain name and view the pages. At present, most of the networks in China use IPv4 addresses. As a basic resource for the Internet, the IPv4 addresses are limited and 80% of the final allocation IP addresses have been used. By the current allocation speed, China's IPv4 address resource can only meet the demand of 830 more days. If there is no available new resource by then, new netizens will not be able to gain normal access to the Internet and the business expansion of network operators will be impossible. Li says that a new IPv6 network address, which is a basic network resource without these limitations, has been developed in America, but this kind of IP address is only used among educational websites in China."[3] China currently has only 27 blocks of registered IPv6 addresses, far less then many smaller nations in the world and ranks 14th on the global list of adopters.[4] Current effort, according to the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission, are focused on trying to get 500,000 trial users of IPv6 by 2010.[5] It will be interesting to watch the expedited transition made by the Chinese in the next two years to IPv6 as they face the ever decreasing viability of IPv4. It is important to note that the events playing out in China will play out in other countries, they are simply occurring here first due to the number of devices they want to make Internet aware.

China: Science & Technology

Source

[1] "China Launches Largest IPv6 Network", Ignrid Mason, December 29, 2004, cnet news, China launches largest IPv6 network - CNET News
[2] "Chinese IPv6 in CIO", Richard Bejtlich, TaoSecurity, August 21, 2006, http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2006/08/chinese-ipv6-in-cio.html
[3]"CNNIC: China's Internet Will Be Short of IP Addresses Soon", ChinaTechNews.Com, September 23, 2008, CNNIC: China’s Internet Will Be Short Of IP Addresses Soon - ChinaTechNews.com - The Technology Source for the Latest Chinese News on Internet, Computers, Digital, Science, Electronics, Law, Security, Software, Web 2.0, Telecom, and Wireless Industries
[4]"CNNIC: China's IPv6 Application Still Lags Behind of Developed Countries", ChinaTechNews.com, March 9, 2006.CNNIC: China’s IPv6 Application Still Lags Behind Of Developed Countries - ChinaTechNews.com - The Technology Source for the Latest Chinese News on Internet, Computers, Digital, Science, Electronics, Law, Security, Software, Web 2.0, Telecom, and Wireless Industries
[5]"China Telecom Refines Plans for IPv6 Introduction, Application", Marbridge Daily, September 12, 2008, China Telecom Refines Plans for IPv6 Introduction, Application | Marbridge Consulting - China Telecom News

IPv6: The Time Was Now

Jerry Sheehan — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:32:20 -0700

Description

The current underlying protocol used for most data transmission is the internet protocol, version 4, aka IPv4. All IPv4 addresses are 32 bits long putting a hard limit on the absolute number of physical addresses that can be supported by the protocol (588.32 million).[1] Within the last decade, this address space has quickly become a scarce resource driven in part by the addition of substantial numbers of international users (India, China), the proliferation of mobile Internet access, and continued expansion of classic PC internet access.

While Network Address Translation (NAT) has given IPv4 a little bit more time, the reality is that it only delays the inevitable transition to IPv6. The most recent predictions done by the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre indicated that we will run out of IPv4 space in February 2011. While one may debate the exact date when the physical network space capacity of IPv4 will be exhausted even optimistic scenarios predict address space exhaustion in 2 years. [2]

IPv6 addresses are a 128 bits long which allows for a much larger physical address space (roughly ten billion billion billion times as many as IPv4). This more advanced protocol also supports a more policy oriented security model, eliminates the need for NAT, and should lead to more efficient network routing.[3]

So, given the clearly problem and potential advantages why hasn't the world already transitioned to IPv6? In one word, money. Current estimates place the infrastructure upgrade necessary to make the transition to an IPv6 environment at roughly $400 billion worldwide. The primary infrastructure that requires the upgrades will be most of the network routers which are in place today. In addition, the addressing scheme and related packet sizes will also challenge existing "workhorse" technologies such as Asynchronous Transfer Mode.[4]

Unlike the metric system, this is a transition to a new standard, that the United States won't be able to simply ignore.

Source

[1]IPv4-Wikipedia, IPv4 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[2]"We're Running Out of IPv4 Addresses. Time for IPv6. Really", IIjitsch Van Beijnum, August 17, 2008, We're running out of IPv4 addresses. Time for IPv6. Really.
[3]IPv6-Wikipedia, IPv6 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[4]"The $200 Billion Lunch: We're Switching to IPv6, Dontcha Know, and It Might Be Worth It", Robert Cringely, PBS, November 2, 2006, I, Cringely . The Pulpit . The $200 Billion Lunch | PBS

ipv4

Will China Be the First Nation to Run Out of IP Addresses?

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IPv6: The Time Was Now

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