Young Chinese people use computers at an Internet cafe in Beijing
Xinhua, the official media of the Communist Party of China (CPC), released the news about the opening ceremony of the “Future Internet Technology Infrastructure” (FITI) high-performance backbone network at Tsinghua University on the 20th. The official media claimed that with the help of FITI, China has the most IPv6 IPs, which is the symbol of the beginning of the next-generation Internet, and has surpassed the United States to become the first in the world. But experts say China is not a technological leader, nor is it in any way pioneering or ahead of the United States in Internet technology.
An information security expert told The Apple that if IPv6 could reach one IP per person, it would be easier for the Chinese Communist Party authorities to monitor Internet users, according to a report cited by the French newspaper.
According to official media reports, the “Future Internet Test Facility FITI” was built by 40 universities, including Tsinghua University, with a focus on pure IPv6 technology, aiming to provide a leading international open test environment for research and design of future Internet architecture. Another major Internet experimental platform.
FITI is said to be the largest Internet test facility in the world and the first national major science and technology infrastructure project in the field of information in China.
FITI is based on a nationwide fiber optic communication network of more than 30,000 kilometers, with core nodes of the backbone network distributed in more than 40 universities in 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government, with a bandwidth of 200GB between the core nodes, while supporting no less than 4,096 large-scale experimental networks, interconnecting with the global IPv6 Internet and simulating the operation and application of the super-scale future Internet.
Every device that accesses the Internet needs an IP address. Previously, IPv4 was used, but its IP resources were insufficient, limiting the application and development of the Internet, so the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) designed IPv6 to replace it. The so-called IPv6 refers to Internet Protocol version6, which has much more IPs than IPv4. While IPv4 can supply up to 4 billion IPs worldwide, the number of IPs in IPv6 has increased by a factor of 2 to 96, claiming that it can assign an IP address to every grain of sand on the earth.
As of June 2019, China was number one in the world for IPv6 IPs, before being surpassed by the United States at one point.
According to technology information website cnBeta.com, as of April 8 this year, China had received a total of 59,039/32 IPv6 address blocks (that is, the number of IPv6 addresses per 32-bit segment), while the United States, currently in second place, had 57,785/32.
Hong Kong Information Technology Chamber of Commerce vice chairman of privacy and network security Fan Jianwen told “Apple” that IP is a rare resource, it is calculated by a mathematical program, there are four points in the world to assign IP by region, “they share all IPv4 (of IP), even if it is a new Internet provider, can not get the IPv4 resources.”
Fan said IPv4 has been in use for about 20 years, and the vast majority of the Internet in Hong Kong is now using IPv4 resources, so IPv4 has reached “a situation where the world is not enough”, which is why IPv6 was launched.
Huang Haohua, a member of the Democratic Party’s Information Technology Constituency, pointed out that IPv6 itself is an international standard, and there was already a discussion about whether to upgrade IPv4 to IPv6 ten years ago. It is not a technological lead, nor is it in any way groundbreaking, nor does it surpass the United States in Internet technology.
The Chinese Communist Party’s push for IPv6 adoption has sparked controversy over privacy issues.
In November 2017, when the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council released the Action Plan for Promoting the Deployment of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) on a Large Scale, Wei Le Ping, director of the Science and Technology Committee of China Telecom, pointed out that from the perspective of national security, the real-name system could be truly implemented after the introduction of IPv6 could reach one IP per person, which, Wei claimed, provides a considerable degree of This will provide a reliable guarantee for the security management of China’s Internet.
Hong Kong Democrats’ Information Technology Constituency member Wong Ho Wah said that IPv6 can generate 96 times more IPs than IPv4, which theoretically enables each user or computer device to have a unique and unchanging IP, making it easier for the authorities to monitor.
However, Huang also pointed out that even if the IP is known, it does not necessarily mean that the user can know what he or she is browsing. Mainlanders can actually use VPN and other wall climbing software, or use Tor Browser to access the Internet through a large number of different transit points to avoid tracking and monitoring by the authorities.
In addition, Wong Ho Wah pointed out that one person, one IP involves a huge investment in related supporting technologies and facilities, such as the same building, users are often shared IP, if the future to each user to use a unique IP, the amount of data transmitted will increase significantly, which will constitute a heavy burden on the building. If the authorities want to cooperate in the server and other hardware, it will be a huge investment, and it will take more than a few years to complete the upgrade of the facilities.
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