China starts full-scale implementation of IPv6.

By Ricky Lu
Beijing Internet Research (BII Group)

Global IPv6 Summit in China 2003

China, a country with a close yet far relationship to Japan, used to be noted for its cheap labor that made it the world’s factory. But in fact, with continued double-digit economic growth for over ten years, it has already transformed itself to a world-class market and is increasingly gaining attention from the world.

In July 2001, the number of cellular phone users in China reached 118 million, exceeding the USA, and earning China the number one position in the world. According to a government survey at the end of the year 2002, the number of such users reached 207 million, representing the largest scale of communication market after taking into account 214 million users of fixed line telephone (in terms of the number of telephone lines). Moreover, the number of Internet users grew with the spread of broadband connectivity, exceeding 50 million at the end of 2002. Total sales by the Chinese telecommunication businesses reached 411.6 Billion Yuan in 2002, representing a 14.4% increase in revenue over 2001, and shows that despite the global IT recession of recent years, the Chinese market is the only place where business is active, making it the breadwinner of Western IT companies.

Regarding the commercialization of the latest technology, China is sometimes ahead of Japan. For instance, IP telephones are very much the focus of attention in Japan these days. But in 1999, China had already built the largest scale IP telephone network in the world, and according to government statistics of June 2002, calls made from IP telephones represented 34% of domestic long-distance calls, those from cellular phones 28% and fixed-line telephones accounted for less than 38%. As of March 2003, the duration of calls for domestic long-distance calls from IP telephones exceeded that made from fixed-line telephones by 33% whereas for international calls, the duration of calls made by IP telephones exceeded that made by fixed-line telephones by 141%.

China, which is experiencing continued high economic growth and is seeing the introduction of the latest technology, has started to make a move to implement the next generation network on full-scale. At the root of this move lies a serious problem concerning IPv4 in China. As of March 2003, China counted 60 million Internet users, and more than 200 million cellular phone users but it only had less than 30 million IPv4 addresses available.

Having already considered this problem as a matter of importance several years ago, the Chinese government and the carriers started in the year 2000 a test-bed with a commercial purpose and have been through several trial-and-errors. As the number of broadband users and 3G cellular phone users will increase rapidly into the future, there is increasing expectation for practical applications of IPv6 aimed at the development of information terminals that can provide various added-value services for such users as well as for providing carrier services.

In May 2002,”Global IPv6 Summit in China 2002” was held under the guidance of the Ministry of Information Industry of P.R. China (“MII”), with the attendance of over 69 leading authorities from the world and China representing telecommunications and Internet including Mr. Latif Ladid, chairman IPv6 Forum; Mr. Jun Murai, representative WIDE project; Mr. Fred Baker, Cisco; Mr. Paul Wilson, APNIC; Mr. Jawad Khhaki, Microsoft; Mr. Lintao Jiang, Chairman China National IP Standard Working Group; Professor Xing Li, Tsingshua University; Mr. Huiling Zhao, Vice-President Beijing Research Institute of China Telecom; Mr. Zhiwei Yang, CTO China Netcom; Mr. Dong Liu, CEO BII Group .

Extra chairs were needed at the summit venue to accommodate the jam-packed audience of over 2000 attendees, a world breaking record even after considering that it was the very first IPv6 summit in China. Attendees continued to crowd the convention center from the start of the program at 8:30 am until its end at 6:30 pm.

Executives from China’s major carriers complained that “as China has less IPv4 addresses than one university in the USA, trouble is starting to arise and it is clear that users will benefit with IPv6, therefore it is necessary to draw a road map to move to IPv6.” Furthermore, MII and the seven major carriers who are involved with the publication of “People’s Posts and Telecommunications News”, a “government newsletter” in reality, treated the topic as a front-page story reporting that “IPv6 must be deployed actively- experts call at the global IPv6 Summit.”

Mainichi Shimbun, the Japanese newspaper also assessed that “the key to success or failure of China’s giant market depends on the speed of diffusion of IPv6.”


Chinese government and carriers begin to make a move

On the basis of the achievements in May 2002 by the Global IPv6 Summit in China 2002, the Chinese government and the relevant industries have started full-scale implementation of IPv6, thus a year later in April 2003, at the Global IPv6 Summit in China 2003, communication carriers and communication equipment vendors made surprisingly impressive presentations.

China Telecom, the largest provider of fixed-line communication (sales of 136.3 billion Yuan in 2002) is planning to invest over 100 billion Yuan (over 1.5 trillion Yen) in the next ten years to test the transition to the next-generation network as well as for the development of services. Implementation tests have been developed jointly by China’s BII and Hitachi since May 2002 in Hunan on the IPv6 trial network, and depending on the results, several IPv6 test connection services and backbone are planned to be built in several locations over the country.

It is also clear now that several other major communication providers such as China Netcom (sales of 67.6 billion Yuan in 2002), China Mobile (sales of 150.9 billion Yuan in 2002) and China Unicom (sales of 50.8 billion Yuan in 2002) will be actively involved in the IPv6 project.

Huawei, the largest vendor of communication equipment in China (sales of 17.2 billion Yuan in 2002) and ZTE (sales of 12.4 billion Yuan in 2002) have announced plans for IPv6 products, and declared that all products will support IPv6 by the year 2006.

It seems that there were certain Japanese parties who were puzzled by the sudden deployment of IPv6 in China. But in fact, since 1999 Mr. Jun Murai and Mr. Hiroshi Esaki from Japan as well as industry leaders of IPv6 from Europe and the USA have been gathering frequently in China to hold passionate discussions with Chinese authorities and relevant businessmen, leading to the Japanese government and European governments each signing a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese government, and various forms of test-beds and joint experiments have been carried out steadily by the private entities. As a result of these low-profile efforts that have been ongoing for several years, the Global IPv6 Summit in China 2003 served as the occasion for China to realize its move to take the lead in the world to introduce IPv6 on a large-scale.

Among various IPv6 projects in China, the one with the most valued track record is 6TNet (IPv6 Telecom Trial Network 6TNet) which is a “next generation IP telecommunication trial network” established jointly by the Research Institute of Telecommunication Transmission (“RITT”) of MII and the Beijing Internet Institute (BII Group). A first in China, the largest commercial multi communication businesses and multi vendors participate in this non-profit IPv6 trial network.

Its purpose is to use the next generation of Internet protocol IPv6 with the latest network facility, in order to develop a carrier-class IPv6 trial network. It researches all functions necessary for a commercial IPv6 service, tests them, provides a test-bed for research and development of application into various services integrating voice, data and images and promotes the large-scale introduction of IPv6 in China as well as its commercialization

6TNet project started on March 1st 2002, and is dealing with the following experiments and topics.

1. Create a simulation environment for the next generation IP telecommunications backbone network, and test inter-connectivity with each manufacturer's router as well as its performance characteristics, test the QoS function of real-time communication service and data service, highlight the problems and present their solutions.
   
2. Create a simulation network environment for the next generation IP city broadband network, to test each type of user access, user authentication, security, accounting, network management and application of next generation network, particularly verify the applications related to IPv6, detect the problems and present their solutions.
   
3. Using the next generation of IP telecommunications network as a platform, verify whether the existing functions and services based on current IPv4 protocol can be used. Detect the problems and present their solutions.
   
4. Provide fixed IP addresses to wireless terminals via the next generation IP telecommunications simulation network. Verify through trials the access and transmission efficiency to wireless terminals on different IP networks. Conduct experiments at the same time on IP broadband services including voice communication, data service, and added-value service. Detect the problems and present their solutions.
   
5. The international standard of next generation IP telecommunications network which includes the policy concerning the distribution of IPv6 addresses is still uncompleted. Study the experiments to detect problems in line with the current situation in China and propose their solutions.
   
6. Create domestic IPv6 facilities and application standards, actively organize and participate in designated businesses.
   
7. Experiment with other relevant topics.

6TNet was jointly set up and run by RITT and BII Group. Not only major Chinese communication companies and research organizations participate in 6TNet, but many foreign communication businesses, international organizations, research organizations, equipment vendors are also actively involved. Among them, carriers such as NTT communications, KDDI, and France Telecom provide management experience while vendors such as Hitachi, NEC, Fujitsu, Matsushita, HP, Microsoft, and 6WIND provide various equipment and techniques, and participation of some great authorities from international organizations such as WIDE, Eurov6, SCAT, IPv6 Forum, Japan’s IPv6 Promotion Council (v6pc) promote the international collaboration for 6TNet. Furthermore, because a memorandum of agreement concerning IPv6 collaboration was signed between the Japanese and Chinese governments, the Japanese Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications is giving strong support.

_ Main IPv6 projects in China
1998 China Education and Research Network (“CERNET”) starts research on IPv6.
1999 BII Group begins R&D for commercialization of IPv6
2000 BII Group runs the test-bed for commercialization of IPv6, interconnects with 6BONE and others.
2001 BII Group and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications start a joint trial project.
2002 March RITT and BII Group start 6TNet (IPv6 Telecom Trial Network) project.
2002 May China Telecom Hunan Province starts IPv6 trial network.
2002 October China Telecom starts IPv6 trial projects in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.
End of 2002 China Netcom, China Mobile, China Unicom prepare for IPv6 trial project
2003 March Beijing IPv6 area network project starts.

_ IPv6 address procurement organizations in China (as of March 2003)
China Education and Research Network CERNET-CN-20000426 2001:0250::/32
China Education and Research Network CERN/CH-20001217 3FFE:8120:: /28
China BII Group BII/CN-20010410 3FFE:81B0::/28
China Academy of Sciences CSTNET/CN-20020123 3FFE:8330::/28
China BII Group BIIV6-CN-20020704 2001:/03FB::/32
China Telecom CHINANET-20020830 2001:OC68::/32
China Academy of Sciences CNNIC CSTNET-CNNIC-20021015 2001:OCCO::/32

_ URL of major IPv6 projects in China
China Education and Research Network http://www.ipv6.net.edu.cn
China BII Group http://www.ipv6.net.cn
6TNet (IPv6 Telecom Trial Network) http://www.6tnet.com.cn