China again signals desire to shape global IPv6 standards

China has again signalled its intention to shape IPv6 standards and encourage more uptake of the standards within its borders – but may not have succeeded with its past ambitions. The nation's Central Network Information Office, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and a couple of other agencies on Thursday issued …

[alain williams]

Will China-IPv6 interoperate with other versions ?

That is what matters. If some 'features' stop working at borders then I will not care** as long as web sites, email, etc are visible globally. We do not want a fracture in the standards such that some parts of the world cannot speak to some other parts. Censorship of content is a different issue.

**Not entirely true, I do care how the Chinese government mistreats its citizens, but that is me speaking with my human head, what I wrote above was written with my techie head.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Will China-IPv6 interoperate with other versions ?

There's no China IPv6, they're proposing a successor and I suspect lots of governments would be happy with more control over networks. Think of the various bills the UK parliament routinely discusses.

However, there is a fundamental problem with this approach to the internet which was is robust because it is not centralised.

[CowHorseFrog]

Re: Will China-IPv6 interoperate with other versions ?

No theres a fundamental problem that you equate the Chinese and British govs as both your enemy. One is an enemy of the people, the other is mostly benevolent and helps a lot of people and is not your enemy.

[R Soul]

Re: Will China-IPv6 interoperate with other versions ?

Which one's which?

[WolfFan]

Re: Will China-IPv6 interoperate with other versions ?

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

[Yes Me]

Re: Will China-IPv6 interoperate with other versions ?

A more fundamental problem is that nobody in the Internet outside China will take any notice of an attempt to bring a national standard into the network. In reality, it's much closer to a one-man show anyway, but I'll refrain from mentioning his name. The company promoting New IP is, by the way, headquartered in the USA.

BTW the Akamai claim of reduced IPv6 adoption is very, very dubious. The Google statistics continue to claim steadily. It all depends what you measure and where you measure it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd just like to say don't trust CHINA

China is corrupt and has no place setting any standards.

It is all-too-predictable that regular bots like "Jake" will disagree

But unlike those wayward scavengers who can't run a mile anymore I do see the truth

DONT TRUST CHINA

though they have the UK sewn up in a game of "who actually makes things"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'd just like to say don't trust CHINA

I don't trust anyone, I don't see why I should be extra careful for China..

[Jellied Eel]

Re: I'd just like to say don't trust CHINA

It is all-too-predictable that regular bots like "Jake" will disagree

Hmm..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65388255

Wikipedia will not comply with any age checks required under the Online Safety Bill, its foundation says.

...The Online Safety Bill, currently before Parliament, places duties on tech firms to protect users from harmful or illegal content and is expected to come fully into force some time in 2024.

Or..

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_23_2413

More diligent content moderation, less disinformation:

Platforms and search engines need to take measures to address risks linked to the dissemination of illegal content online and to negative effects on freedom of expression and information;

Platforms need to analyse their specific risks, and put in place mitigation measures – for instance, to address the spread of disinformation and inauthentic use of their service.

Our politicians are actively taking steps to make censorship easier, and ensure that the only disinformation spread is the government approved stuff.

[WolfFan]

Re: I'd just like to say don't trust CHINA

Jake is a bot? Tell us more. Details. Lots of them.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: they have the UK sewn up

Buddy, COVID has demonstrated that China has sewn up that game for a lot more countries than just the UK.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Re: I'd just like to say don't trust CHINA

@OPAC:

I don't necessarily disagree with your fundamental premise, but most of your post makes you sound like a frothing loon.

[Eclectic Man]

Re: I'd just like to say don't trust CHINA

A couple of things:

For a 'bot' ("regular bots like "Jake" will disagree") Jake is remarkably effective at addressing points clearly, not going off on irrelevant tangents and correcting me when I am wrong. I strongly suspect the Register's commentard known as "Jake" to be human.

Secondly: " they have the UK sewn up in a game of "who actually makes things" "

Had you been paying attention you would have realised that the entire World has the UK sewn up for who actually makes things, especially since we became a 'service economy' attempting to make a living out of opening doors for each other. After all the millionaire Bank of England flunky, Huw Pill, has told all of us plebs that we should just accept that we are less well off now and not try to maintain our previous level of lifestyle. You know like actually being able to afford food and heating, at the same time.

Time to drown my sorrows.

[steviebuk]

Re: I'd just like to say don't trust CHINA

Its all the Wumaos that do the down voting.

"I remember yoooooouuu"

[martinusher]

Re: I'd just like to say don't trust CHINA

The Chinese tend to be very polite people in my experience so they probably won't ever say directly to your face "Do we care?"

People in the UK -- and likely the US these days -- need a bit of a reality check. The UK is a small, resource poor, country that in the space of my working life has gone from "major player" to "nonentity" in communications. Its not the caliber of individuals that's the problem but an inability of the country as a whole to recognize that they're not at the helm of a huge Empire any more. Times change, and with it the relative strengths of societies. The Chinese would like to keep selling you stuff, its what they do, and you don't need to be best buddies or even like them for them to continue to do this. If you don't want the stuff, fine. Others will buy it.

To the topic at hand.

China has a huge telecommunications sector and a large internal market. This alone will make them a dominant player whether you like it or not. I personally think they're flogging a dead horse with IPv6, I've been with it since Day One and it was a nasty kludge then and its a nasty kludge now but I figure if anyone's going to make it work then it will be the Chinese (...and good luck to them.....).

[bombastic bob]

Re: I'd just like to say don't trust CHINA

From the article: "New IP, which has its roots at Huawei, included features that would allow governments greater control over the internet".

China is run by the CCP, aka COMMUNISTS. They mistreat their own people, use "social credit score" to intimidate and ensure COMPLIANCE, and are JUST as much of an 'Evil Emptire' with their NEW AXIS that includes Russia and Iran.

Do we REALLY want THESE people DICTATING to the rest of us how we should conduct online communication worldwide??

** NO ** !!! Xi Jing Pooh may have the biggest "balloons" but we do NOT need to surrender ANY more worldwide power/influence to the CCP!!!

[ChoHag]

Will it come with blackjack and hookers?

[Jellied Eel]

Will it come with blackjack and hookers?

Only if your social credit score is high enough, and you come from the right family..

[Charlie Clark]

Dodgy stats

Rolling IPv6 back to IPv4 is virtually impossible so the claim that IPv6 rollout is slipping has to be taken with a pinch of salt. It's more likely that China is taking networks off the internet so it's more difficult to gather data about them.

Whatever, China's approach is the correct one: actively promoting uptick puts in them in a better position to shape future developments. A lot in the West, particularly in the US, are happy to bury their heads in the sand saying IPv6 is flawed (it certainly isn't perfect). But it's a lot easier to do this if you still have a huge pool of IPv4 addresses and as such don't have to deal as much with its manifold shortcomings.

[AMBxx]

Re: Dodgy stats

If IPv6 was a project in a private company, it would have been abandoned long ago as not fit for purpose. Even Microsoft give up when they realise they've messed up.

It's a shame it's been so over-specified that we'll not need an improved v7 in our lifetimes.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Dodgy stats

All modern clients support IPv6 and this is what matters.

Rollout of IPv6 here in Germany continues. At some point, IPv4 will essentially be running on local networks only with 6to4 gateways doing the heavy lifting. This will solve many of the problems of IPv4 without th dreaded switch off. It reminds me a bit of the move from http to http2 which was also heavily criticised by has since then been nearly universally replaced because, despite its problems, it was an improvement.

Those countries that don't join in may find themselves in difficulties in ten years or so when they have to replace existing kit. They won't have the skills either to deal with the new kit or make more of the old stuff.

[R Soul]

Re: Dodgy stats

Switching from http to http2 is orders of magnitude easier than getting IPv6 deployed. You can just about count the number of significant server and client implementations on one hand. So when those vendors turned on http2 support, it was job done.

For IPv6, it's a very different story. Too much important stuff depends on IPv4. So it's not going to go away. Nobody's in a position to force IPv6 adoption because of that IPv4 installed base. And there's no issue when it comes to replacing existing kit because that'll still come with an IPv4 stack long after our great-grandchildren have retired.

[A Non e-mouse]

Re: Dodgy stats

Have you checked your home broadband connection? Many UK ISPs have been quietly providing IPv6 for some years now. Sky is one of the biggest that I'm aware of, but they're not the only ones.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Dodgy stats

There are also many free IPv4 to IPv6 tunnels out there. (I happen to use he.net)

It helps with implementation if you can make an IPv6 tunnel and correctly support it with your WiFi router.

[david 12]

Re: Dodgy stats

All modern clients support IPv6 and this is what matters

Actually, clients supporting IPv6 matters not at all (except in China, where 'security by obscurity' is laughed at).

What matters is that the internet backbone is moving to IPV6 -- where it makes sense.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Dodgy stats

I have been using an IPv6 tunnel for several years and I think it works just fine, except that my personal domain does not have the ability to be served up with an IPv6 address directly (this is the name provider's fault but I am too lazy to switch providers).

Otherwise it's fine, performance-wise and everything else. For me, anyway...

(and this is with my updated connection, not the old one with a pathetically slow DSL)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Dodgy stats

Thanks for the reminder, I still need to set up AAAA records for a few webservers (nothing fancy, some Wordpress and Joomla! sites). I had to wait with that as I didn't know how well the firewalling software would work, but now tests have shown that it works I think it's time to make that jump to IPv6.

My provider has been able to support it for ages, I just wasn't quite ready myself :).

[DS999]

Thanks to the Great Firewall

China has an easier time converting to IPv6 than the west does, since almost everything anyone in China connects to is inside their own country. Whereas if say the EU decided they wanted to go IPv6 they can't force US websites to support IPv6 connections, or vice versa.

[Hubert Cumberdale]

Re: Thanks to the Great Firewall

Being a totalitarian regime, China are better placed than most to make IPv6 happen in their country. However, it'd be nice if they'd also actually normalise the use of TLS like most of the rest of the world. I go to a lot of Chinese journal websites, and almost all of them are plain, unencrypted HTTP. I guess they don't really want people using encryption. Which is exactly why I think everyone should encrypt everything all the time.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: Thanks to the Great Firewall

if say the EU decided they wanted to go IPv6 they can't force US websites to support IPv6 connections

I bet they'll try, though.

[Trigun]

I can't stand IPv6. I realise that a new version is definately need, and I know IPv6 is future proof, but I still "don't like like it" (insert Little Britain vocie over here)

[bombastic bob]

I have not yet heard any compelling arguments NOT to implement IPv6 as it currently exists, even if it is imperfect.

I just do not want CHINA/CCP dictating internet protocols, no matter HOW much "Hunny" Xi Jing Pooh spreads on it (to make it more 'palatable')

[Anonymous Coward]

The firewall actually living up to it's name.

Chinese citizens last week had a horrible taste of that control at work: news of a fire in a Beijing hospital that killed at least 20 patients was scantily reported on social and news media – a seemingly intentional act of preventing bad news from reaching the populace.

[TimMaher]

Re: The firewall actually living up to it's name.

More a wall of fire by the looks of it.

[Bebu]

The upside is?

Perhaps IP/SEC might be "fixed"

We don't want the Great Firewall of China to be overloaded dealing with peer to peer encryption? :)

I can imagine a PRC "extension" that requires all security associations to be brokered through an "approved" party.

Unfortunately more "enlightened" states than the PRC wouldn't be averse to supporting this if only to "think of the children." If more consideration of the fate of children in conflict zones were given by proponents of these measures I might give them more air. I don't know whether IP/SEC is used that much with IPv6 or IPv4 outside corporate or government settings or even within such environments which probably means apart from mandated official use any IPv6.CN standard will wither on the vine even within the PRC. In this sphere I suspect corpses of ISO and ITU standardization efforts litter the landscape - death by commitee. :)

I remember reading some pithy comments by Radia Perlman on some of the standardization processes she was involved in that I imagine would be just as applicable today. ("Interconnections" and "Network Security" I think)

[Christian Berger]

It actually doesn't matter which megaorganisation wants to controll the Internet

I mean we also see "NEW IP" movements from the west, with Big "Tech" wanting to take over essential services like DNS or the Web.

It doesn't matter if those organizations are motivated by greed or the desire for control, we need to oppose it.

The obvious way to do so is to avoid complexity. Simple protocols are easier to implement. That means you have more implementations and less control from big organizations.

Plain IPv6 is a good step in that direction as it simplifies a lot of things. For example there no longer is a need for NA(P)T which eliminated the need for workarounds for it. You can have end-to-end connectivity which eliminates the need for central servers. You could build things like messaging systems without any need of an organization operating it.