The right time for IPv6 upgrade: Seize the opportunity for the development of the next generation Internet

In November last year, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the "Action Plan to Promote the Scale Deployment of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)." In April this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology further issued an implementation notice, vigorously promoting the scale deployment of IPv6 as a national strategy.

According to the latest policy requirements, by the end of 2025, my country will fully build the world's leading IPv6 technology, industry, facilities, applications and security system. The number of IPv6 active users will reach 850 million, and the proportion of IPv6 traffic on mobile networks will reach 70%.

This profound Internet infrastructure change is reshaping the business ecosystem and competitive landscape.

National strategy: IPv6 scale deployment enters the fast lane

Today, as the wave of digitalization is sweeping the world, the upgrading of Internet infrastructure has become an important part of the national strategy.

In 2025, the Central Cyberspace Administration, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the "Key Points for Further Promoting the Scale Deployment and Application of IPv6 in 2025", which clarified the specific goals and implementation paths for IPv6 development during the year.

The document requires that by the end of 2025, the number of IPv6 active users will reach 850 million, the number of Internet of Things IPv6 connections will reach 1.1 billion, fixed network IPv6 traffic will account for 27%, and mobile network IPv6 traffic will account for 70%.

These clear and quantifiable indicators demonstrate the country's firm determination to promote the scale deployment of IPv6.

The development of IPv6 has been included in the important national agenda. From the central government to local governments, from the government to enterprises, a strong synergy is being formed to promote the scale deployment and application of IPv6.

Address exhaustion: IPv4's survival crisis

Why is the world actively promoting IPv6? The depletion of IPv4 address resources is the direct cause.

IPv4 uses a 32-bit address length and can only provide about 4.3 billion addresses, which has long exceeded by the number of Internet users in the world, resulting in a large number of devices having to share public IP through NAT (Network Address Translation).

This method of "tearing down Peter to make up Paul" not only increases the complexity of the network, but also reduces transmission efficiency.

Our country has long faced the dilemma of address shortage in the IPv4 era, and companies have to pay high costs to obtain or rent IPv4 addresses.

At the same time, China does not have a root server during the IPv4 phase, and the resolution rights of domain names are subject to others, posing a potential risk to the national network strategic security.

Four major advantages: How IPv6 reshapes corporate networks

massive address space

IPv6 uses a 128-bit address length and provides approximately 3.4×10³ addresses, a number described as "providing an IP address for every grain of sand on earth."

This means that enterprises can allocate independent public IP to each device and sensor, easily supporting the access needs of massive devices in the Internet of Things era.

Faster transmission speeds

IPv6 eliminates the NAT translation link, and data can be directly transmitted from the source address to the destination address, greatly improving transmission efficiency.

Measured data shows that in the IPv6 environment, the average user loading speed has increased by 28%, and the stuck rate has dropped by 42%.

IPv6 improves router forwarding efficiency by 30% compared with IPv4 by streamlining and fixing 40-byte packet headers.

Stronger security

IPv6 natively supports IPSec encryption, which can provide end-to-end security for network layer data.

Each user and device has a unique IPv6 address, which makes it easy to quickly trace and trace the origin once network security issues occur.

It only takes 45 minutes to scan all IPv4 addresses, but it takes 500,000 years to traverse IPv6 addresses at a rate of 1 million addresses per second! This greatly improves the network's ability to resist attacks.

Better network management

IPv6 introduces automatic configuration and reconfiguration technology to automatically add, delete, update and configure IP addresses and other information, which greatly improves the convenience of network management.

IPv6 address allocation follows the principle of clustering from the beginning, which allows the router to represent a subnet with a record in the routing table, which greatly reduces the length of the routing table in the router and improves the speed at which the router forwards data packets.

Industrial Opportunities: IPv6 Stimulates Business Innovation Potential

The value of IPv6 goes far beyond solving the address shortage problem, but more importantly, it provides new possibilities for digital transformation in all walks of life.

In the field of smart cities, IPv6-based IoT architecture can connect hundreds of millions of smart devices to achieve comprehensive perception and collaborative management of urban elements.

Through IPv6 transformation, the Beijing City government cloud platform has realized real-time data transmission from 2 million smart sensors, and the fault response time has been shortened to milliseconds.

In the industrial Internet scenario, IPv6 supports stream labeling technology, which can prioritize low-latency services such as Real-Time Communication and industrial control.

A manufacturing company used this feature to control the communication delay of PLC equipment on the production line to within 2ms, and the product yield rate increased by 1.2 percentage points.

In the financial industry, IPv6+SAVI technology can effectively prevent address counterfeiting. The attack interception rate of a bank's core trading system has increased to 99.9%, and the annual outage time has been reduced to 3 minutes.

Wu Hequan, academician of China Academy of Engineering, pointed out: "IPv6 is an important starting point for building a resilient network. It can support refined and personalized network management and data flow management. SRV6 based on IPv6 can also connect to the edge of the cloud network to optimize the secure application of artificial intelligence capabilities."

Smooth migration: Enterprise IPv6 upgrade solution

For enterprises, migrating to IPv6 has become an inevitable choice. There are currently three main upgrade options:

Dual stack technology: The host or router is equipped with both IPv4 and IPv6 protocol stacks, ensuring that it can communicate with both IPv4 and IPv6 networks. This is the most thorough upgrade method, but its shortcomings are the long transformation cycle and high cost.

Tunneling technology: refers to encapsulating the header of a packet of another protocol directly in front of the header of the original packet, so that it can be directly transmitted on networks with different protocols. This method has great limitations and cannot solve the skylight problem caused by the reference of links outside the station.

Translation technology: This technology is flexible and has nothing to do with physical location. Websites only need to add a corresponding AAAA record to their authorized DNS. This method has a short cycle, flexible deployment, and can solve the skylight problem. It is a transformation method with relatively mature technology and many applications.

Enterprises can choose appropriate upgrade plans based on their own business characteristics, technical strength and budget.

Data shows that after a certain video platform completed the IPv6 transformation, the average user loading speed increased by 28%, and the stuck rate dropped by 42%. Another manufacturing company used IPv6 stream labeling technology to control the communication delay of PLC equipment on the production line to within 2ms, and the product yield rate increased by 1.2 percentage points.

The future has come, and only changes will suit you. Today, when the digital economy is booming, IPv6 upgrades are no longer a multiple-choice question, but a must-answer question. Deploying IPv6 as soon as possible is to seize the development opportunities in the next five to ten years.