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The Internet

More on China's IPv6 Network Buildout 163

Posted by michael from the go-big-or-go-home dept.
photojournaliste writes "China has developed and demonstrated its first high-performance network core router based on the next-generation Internet standard known as IPv6, which the country officially inaugurated earlier this week." There's also a CNet story, which has a bit more information than our earlier story.
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More on China's IPv6 Network Buildout More

More on China's IPv6 Network Buildout

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  • Any more high-profile rollouts of IPv6? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The One KEA ( 707661 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @01:19PM (#11228537) Journal
    Does anyone know if there are similar projects in scope and concept to this one?

  • Develop intellectual property, copy model # (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PornMaster ( 749461 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @01:20PM (#11228550) Homepage
    Yes, this new router does IPv6 and the Cisco 12016 doesn't, but isn't the model number a little familiar [cisco.com]?

    Is this the Intel/AMD "486" thing all over again?

    • Re:Develop intellectual property, copy model # (Score:5, Funny)

      by Duncan3 ( 10537 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @01:43PM (#11228697) Homepage
      What, are you implying the chinese would take the Cisco product, copy it IOS, product number and all, then add IPv6?

      That's absurd, noone can read Cisco source code.
    • Wasn't the AMD 486 basically the same design? For a while Intel had to licence out the chip designs so they can supply the military. Around the 486 time, Intel decided to leave that market and quit the licencing.
    • The 12000 series supports IPv6 and so does the very model you point out.

      Check the release notes:

      http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/iosswrel / ps 5014/prod_release_note09186a0080199977.html

      The chinese probably are using the cisco GSRs. If you google for GSR IPv6 you'll see a couple places with IPv6 and the GSR in action (abiliene?) and some with Juniper to GSR Ipv6 connections.

      -A

      While the idea that the chinese stole the router and hacked in IPv6 is nice, it is much easier to believe they bought a co

    • Re:Develop intellectual property, copy model # (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You realise that the Chinese basically 0wn the US, and that intellectual "property" is just bits of paper at most?

      I"P" is a massive scam to get the West to stop manufacturing. "Made in England (or USA)" used to be a mark of pride, now all the real work is done by China, while the idiot West kills itself fighting over who has the most imaginary property?

      Pretty soon, all the West will have will be ephermal dreams, and the rest of the world will say "fuck that".

  • The network operates between 10gb and 40gb a second... with current hard-disk technology it must have been a challenge to collate enough equipment at each end of the link to generate that much bandwidth without bottle-necking.

    Do network speed tests rely on clusters of machines?

  • One thing I like (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bert.cl ( 787057 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @01:26PM (#11228586)
    From the CNet article:

    Some experts have predicted that once China has embraced IPv6, Western countries that wish to do business with Asia will have to upgrade their own networks.

    There is actually some truth in this, and might increase the accepetance rate. Same thing is happening to governments using OOo file formats is all, but at a smaller scale.

    However, the other article said that it is backward compatible with ipv4, are they using some kind of NAT then, or is it just backward compatible in the sense that the Chinese network can read of ipv4 networks.

    Another critique is that, whilst this network uses ipv6, it is mainly used to connect university networks, therefore, business won't be as much pushed to adopt ipv6, hence the article...

    • I suppose you could do some kind of hash from ip6 down to ip4.
      It may infact make the internet a bit more random and fun again ;)
    • IP4 over IP6 tunnel. Set the IP4 gateways at the border, where the rest of the world is, only route IP6 inside.

      easy way to determine what's outbound traffic without having to look at the destination.... that would probably be benificial to the chinese government
    • However, the other article said that it is backward compatible with ipv4, are they using some kind of NAT then, or is it just backward compatible in the sense that the Chinese network can read of ipv4 networks.

      yeah, that'll translate well...

      Chinese guy: let's browse over to Slashdot...
      His computer: Hey 66.35.250.150, I'm FEDC:BA98:7654:3210:FEDC:BA98:7654:3210 and I want all your base to belong to me. Or maybe just you're index.html.
      Slashdot server: WTF? What's all that "FEDC" gobbly-gook supposed to
    • However, the other article said that it is backward compatible with ipv4, are they using some kind of NAT then, or is it just backward compatible in the sense that the Chinese network can read of ipv4 networks.
      IIRC the way it should work is slashdot.org (66.35.250.150) becomes 0:0:0:0.66.35.250.150 which tells the ipv6 router to use ipv4. After upgrading to ipv6 slashdots ip is now 0:0:0:FFFF.66.35.250.150
      which means that slashdot can use ipv6. Eventually slashdot would get its own ipv6 block and stop us

  • I think that... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wolf31o2 ( 778801 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @01:27PM (#11228594)
    I really believe that this is a good thing. Many people are not embracing IPv6 due to lack of a high-profile rollout showing its feasability. Also, much of the software out there does not take advantage of IPv6. Having such a large number of people using IPv6 will persuade a few more people to start coding their software capable of using IPv6 addressing.

    I really look forward to the day when I can (once again) have end-to-end connectivity with peers. The proliferation of NAT devices truly has changed the face of the Internet from a large peer-to-peer network with content at every corner, to a client-server model where content is only served by those with enough capital.

    This is readily apparent in the draconian acceptable useage policies of most providers.

    I *want* to be able to connect to any of my home machines from work, and vice-versa (firewall permitting). I would *love* to have my own block of portable address space for me to do with as I please.

    I simply can't wait for this to catch on in more places. I encourage all of you to look into IPv6 and see how much added benefit you could get from having a near-unexhaustable pool of addresses available.
    • I *want* to be able to connect to any of my home machines from work, and vice-versa (firewall permitting). I would *love* to have my own block of portable address space for me to do with as I please.

      I already do all of this, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to, it just requires that you correctly setup your router at home and know your ip address. I use dyndns with my router and have each machine setup to be accessible from a different port number.

      • True, but what you're doing is working around a fundamental weakness of both IPv4 (the relative scarcity of addresses) and your ISP's policy (not willing to allocate you a static IP for each machine, partly due to #1). With IPv6, both issues are moot.

    • Re:I think that... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ctime ( 755868 )
      You know just as well if everyone on the planet had their own dedicated IP space, the number of trojans, worms, and other malicious code that uses IP 'sprays' to find hosts would spiral out of control.. I don't think anyone realizes how many PC's are effectively firewalled and safe thanks to the NAT routers you think we should abandoned. Even if we did have IPv6 available at home, no business with enough sense to rub together would give every end user a block of IP's, routing of their own IP's (block), nor
      • Not true.. it actually becomes unfeasable to find machines with random IPs.

        If you have a /48 or a /64, which is likely, then the rest of the address is derived from your mac address... unless you can actually randomly guess that then 'random' hunting just isn't going to work.

        • Security through obscurity? I'm pretty sure thats what you just described.

      • Re:I think that... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by timoteo21 ( 845149 )
        Evidentally, there are a fair number of hosts on the Internet with public IP addresses that are running "programs which listen on ports." Otherwise, there would be no communication at all. So, what is it about these "server" machines that make them more secure than "client" machines? Why can those practices not be implemented on client machines?

      • Re:I think that... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by asdfghjklqwertyuiop ( 649296 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @09:08PM (#11231366)

        I don't think anyone realizes how many PC's are effectively firewalled and safe thanks to the NAT routers you think we should abandoned.


        NAT has nothing to do with firewalling. NAT does not drop any packets whatsoever - your firewall does. With IPv6 noone is proposing that we stop using firewalls, just that we stop using NAT. Nobody's network will be one bit less safe by dropping the NAT and keeping the firewall.

    • I *want* to be able to connect to any of my home machines from work, and vice-versa. NAT and port forwarding take care o this already. Most companies DON'T wan any machine to be publicly accesible.

    • Re:I think that... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I really believe that this is a good thing. Many people are not embracing IPv6 due to lack of a high-profile rollout showing its feasability.

      Many people are also not building gigantic football stadiums made out of cotton candy due to lack of a high-profile rollout showing its feasability. But just because someone does it doesn't mean you will get more gigantic cotton-candy stadiums, even though it does solve the shortage of cotton-candy at football games.

      Also, much of the software out there does not

      • I really look forward to the day when I can (once again) have end-to-end connectivity with peers.

        I don't. I don't want any AOL customers to have direct internet connections for instance.

        Then keep your firewall in place. You do have one, don't you? Noone is proposing we drop firewalls with IPv6, just NAT.

        Use port forwarding if you have less than roughly 60,000 machines. It works for me.

        You don't use SSH or SSL or any other protocol that does host-based authentication? If not, and if you don't

    • Re:I think that... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
      I *want* to be able to connect to any of my home machines from work, and vice-versa (firewall permitting). I would *love* to have my own block of portable address space for me to do with as I please.

      IPs were never meant to be portable. Making it portable really messes up routing. This is why you set up DNS so you can name each device. I have a DHCP server that gives out IPs based on MAC addresses so all I have to remember is a name, not a long number (IPv6 numbers are a lot longer too).

      • Re:I think that... (Score:3, Informative)

        by Yebyen ( 59663 )
        Bzzzt... There is actually an addressing protocol built into IPv6 known as "Mobile IPv6" which allows a machine on the home network, listening for packets addressed to one of your "mobile IP's" will respond with a packet that tells the sender where to find that computer right now, a "care-of address."

        This all requires the mobile computer to report back periodically with status updates on its current "care-of IP", and that's all. This is not a tunnel, it's real mobile IP, built into the protocol. I believ
    • I agree that using a NAT is a pain if you need direct P2P connectivity, but OTOH, it's also useful as it basically works like a one-way firewall so that outsiders won't be able to get into your network so easily. For once, I didn't have to worry about those Windows RPC worms for my home network. In that way, it's kind of useful. But then, there are many more ways to infect a private network.

      • I agree that using a NAT is a pain if you need direct P2P connectivity, but OTOH, it's also useful as it basically works like a one-way firewall so that outsiders won't be able to get into your network so easily.


        Actually NAT doesn't act like a firewall at all. Read the RFCs sometime, it doesn't actually drop any packets, it simply re-writes certain ones.

    • I agree, I can't wait for IPv6. We are rolling out our new 10Gbit network in the spring and once we start doing video, we will probably do IPv6 for all the set-top boxes as well as the streaming servers. That way we can have a totally closed IPv6 network to start playing around. Foundry [foundrynetworks.com] makes the NetIron 40G that does IPv6 at wirespeed right now and it's backplane is 40Gbs so its ready to go when we want to increase capacity yet again. Also, I run the IP network for an ISP and I have our DSL network se

    • I agree using a NAT is a pain if one needs direct P2P connectivity, but OTOH, it also gives you a basic one-way firewall so that outsiders won't be able to get in so easily.

      For example, if a Windows box is behind a NAT, the chance of getting infected by a new RPC bug drops significantly.

      In that sense, it's useful.

      But then, there are so many more ways to get into a private network (Such as worms propagate through browser bugs...), and a basic NAT is not a replacement for those who need two-way access c

    • OK I'm a network engineer been one for 15 years. IPv6 does not make customer address space portable, it does make it easier to "renumber" but in no way does it even help multi homing. So you IP's from your provider are no more portable actualy since the rules for getting IPv6 space are harder pretty much anybody withou an AS does not qualify and there are 16 bits of those half of them allready used. v6 only deals with multicast and IP space as it's big wins. Funny the telco's dont want Multicast to work
  • According to the CNET article, CERN stands for China Education and Research Network... What about History of CERN [physicstoday.org]? Oh well, I guess that there are advantages to living in a world without legacy systems or intellectual property...
  • One has to wonder what vested interest China has in implementing new protocols, especially with a view to becoming a leader amongst world powers when it comes to the internet. Especially when one factors in the way information is controlled (alright, less and less, but still controlled) in China at the moment.

    Isn't this self-defeating for a communist country as it exists now?
    • There is, actually, a dark side to the PRC's
      adoption of IPv6. There will be no way for
      any dissident to hide behind a NATed IPv4
      address. Everyone will have their own static
      IP address assigned to them, so there will
      not be any anonimity to hide behind.

      In the Soviet PRC, the Internet owns YOU!
    • I think it's self-defeating for a totalitarian dictatorship.. For communism I don't really see the problem.
      • I don't see much difference between totalitarian dictatorship and communism. Both can only be implemented through coercion and force. Why do you draw a distinction?
        • Any non-trivial government can only be implemented through coercion and force. The most 'free' nations in the world _still_ need jails to enforce it's laws. As Tolstoy said 'Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us' (paraphrased, and where Tolstoy's violence is 'some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.) I don't really see a reason why communism requires a totalitarian dictatorship; it is true that most communist societi
          • The free nations of the world use jails to incarcerate criminals. Nations that are not free use jails to incarcerate dissidents.

            Under a communist regime, the government is not answerable to the people. The political process is controlled by the party elites. The average citizen's only role in the process is to submit to the dictates of the party. To do otherwise means a short painful life in a gulag.

            A report from CNN on gulags in North Korea [cnn.com]

            Non-trivial totalitarian governments can only be impleme

    • a view to becoming a leader amongst world powers when it comes to the internet

      That doesn't do it? : )

      To be serious, I think (With no hard data supporting the claim.) China's technology, especially in the academic institutions, is much more advanced than many think, and can actually utilize some of that.

    • "Self-defeating" as applied to a communist nation simply means continuing to embrace communism.

  • Billions? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 31, 2004 @01:37PM (#11228660)
    From the news.com article
    By increasing this to 128 bits, IPv6 provides billions more IP addresses

    Billions? Try 3.4 dodecillion

  • The Question Is... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ewanrg ( 446949 ) <ewan.grantham@gmail.STRAWcom minus berry> on Friday December 31, 2004 @01:37PM (#11228667) Homepage
    When will IPV6 support become important rather than just interesting? I think the CNet article partly addresses this - when the Asian markets make it a requirement.

    On the other hand, it's still pretty easy to tunnel IPV4 through IPV6, so where is the incentive to upgrade going to be?

    At least running Linux at home, that's one conversion worry I don't have :-)

    ---

    My blog [blogspot.com] or yours?

    • We cannot switch to IPv6 until we've figured out a way to stop spam, or else things will get exponentially worse. This is a prerequisite.
    • I wasn't aware that there was an easy way to tunnel v4 over pure v6 nets. The only method I know of is the dual stack transition mentor (DSTM) which IIRC requires daemons not only at the v6 net's edge but on each of the v6 clients doing.

  • Last to market (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hey ( 83763 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @01:40PM (#11228679) Journal
    It helps to be last to market. They get those nice pebble bed nuclear reators, IPv6, no need to waste all the money with land lands just use the latest WiFi or cell phone tech, etc.
  • If China government is trying to control what Chinese people can do on Internet...what's the point of having a high-performance router if they can't download pr0n movies? Linux distros?
    • While I am not familar with IPV6 beyond the large increase in address space; IPV6 security features such as the Authentication Header might be a great way of making sure only nproperly documented citizens are allowed on the Internet. You may also be able to ensure that they do not connect to undesirable services such as anonymous proxies.

      Xix.
      • Ok, have u ever been to China? or Do u understand Chinese? If not, just stop talking about "Freedom in China".
        • No, I have never been to China. However it has been demonstrated that the Chinese government has an interest in technology to control Internet access:
          http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/12/04/it_giants_ fingered_over_links/

          On this basis, I'd expect the security provisions of IPV6 to be attractive (depeinding on what they let you do). Seems like a pretty logical conclusion to me.

          Xix.

  • Why the Chinese are using IPv6 (Score:3, Funny)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @01:54PM (#11228763)
    ..because they are running out of non-RBL'd IPv4 space from which to spam....
  • Hitachi GST sues Chinese disk drive maker [yahoo.com]

    Reuters

    Wednesday December 29, 4:59 PM
    Hitachi GST sues Chinese disk drive maker
    HONG KONG, Dec 29 (Reuters) - The hard disk drive manufacturing joint venture between Hitachi Ltd. and IBM said on Wednesday it has sued Chinese firm Magicstor Inc., saying it had made multiple patent infringements.

    In the suit filed in United States District Court, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies seeks monetary damages and a permanent injunction barring Magicstor from making and se

  • I want to buy some of this stock (Score:4, Funny)

    by gtrubetskoy ( 734033 ) * on Friday December 31, 2004 @02:04PM (#11228831)

    China has developed and demonstrated its first high-performance network core router based on the next-generation Internet standard

    China? Are they public yet? What's their ticker, I can't find it??

  • someone has to say it. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ctime ( 755868 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @02:06PM (#11228843)
    According to the article, half of the 'core' networking equipment was suppied by chinnese companties, of the two, one happened to be Huawei technolgies.

    Lest we forget!

    http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/corp_012303.html

    One of my favorite quotes to be found on cisco's website:

    Copying of IOS source code: Cisco alleges that Huawei has copied portions of the Cisco IOS source code and included the technology in its operating system for its Quidway routers and switches. Huawei's operating system contains a number of text strings, file names, and bugs that are identical to those found in Cisco's IOS source code.

    • "Intellectual Property" vs National Interests (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MacDork ( 560499 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @10:18PM (#11231649) Journal
      Can you guess the winner? Did Germany pay the Wright Brothers royalties on their intellectual property? How about the USSR and the A bomb? India and AIDS drugs? The very notion that an idea can be owned by any one person or corporation is absurd. As for the alleged wholesale plagiarism, well... that's karma for you. It serves Cisco right for helping build the great firewall of China. I feel no pity for them.
  • Has anyone heard about content control and surveillence technology built into all of this? I'd be very surprised if the government designed router and network did not have a mechanism to sniff packets and block or reroute email or Web traffic they find objectionable.

  • The CNET article itself is terrible. (Score:5, Informative)

    by James Youngman ( 3732 ) <jay.gnu@org> on Friday December 31, 2004 @02:09PM (#11228859) Homepage
    I cannot believe there were so many errors in an article which is only 358 words long. What a bad piece of journalism. Only 81 words are devoted to the China new item, the rest ss background on IPv6. The IPv6 information is riddled with errors.

    There is a rather better article on the subject of IPV6 adoption at InternetWeek, but that article is now four years old.

    As for the specific information in the article,
    "IPv6 provides billions more IP addresses" - I think the reporter is a bit confused about all these large numbers. IPv6 provides billions of TIMES more addresses. More even than that in fact; 2 to the power 128 is 79228162514264337593543950336 times greater than 2 to the power 32. (This calculation was brought to you by GNU bc [gnu.org])

    "It was created and deployed in response to ... especially as Web use in Asia rises sharply." - The author has fallen for the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy [wikipedia.org]. In any case, the beginning of the development of IPv6 occurred significantly before the extensive takeup of Internet technologies in Asia.

    As other people have already mentioned (including in the reader comments below the article - I would have contributed but see no point in "registering" with CNET), goodness knows where the journalist got their figure of "257 nodes". They should perhaps take the time to either check their notes or cross-check the information their sources are giving them.

    Something the author failed to point out is that it is not only Asian countries that have been working with IPV6. There has been significant piloting in most countries that make use of the Internet. This means that there are IPV6 over IPv4 tunneling facilities that work therse days, meaning that it is not necessary for countries up upgrade everything to IPv6 in order for their businesses to trade with China, no matter what the article implies.

    • "...meaning that it is not necessary for countries up upgrade everything to IPv6 in order for their businesses to trade with China, no matter what the article implies."

      The IPv6 network was academic institutions only, from what I understood. How is this any different than the Internet2 that we (colleges, etc) have in the US?
  • 320 billion bits per sec == 37.25 GB/sec. Seems low to me?

  • IPv6 on Internet2 (Score:3, Informative)

    by Danathar ( 267989 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @02:56PM (#11229108) Journal
    Contrary to what many people know...there are MANY networks that are IPv6 enabled. Just not many IPv6 apps.

    ALL of abiline (Internet2) is v6 enabled, just not all the way to clients.

    Here is an up to date map of deployment of Ipv6 on I2.

    http://www.abilene.iu.edu/images/v6.pdf [iu.edu]

    • I know when I at school at Vanderbilt (I2 enabled school) we get IPv6 addresses all the way down to our dorm rooms. I've had an IPv6 address for well over a year if not more. Never noticed until I installed gentoo about 2 years ago.

      I'm interested that this did not make the news aswell. Internet 2 is what exactly the new Chinese network is trying to do. It must be the fact that
      China, a technological underdog.

  • china (Score:1)

    by fudy ( 785869 )
    They are comunists ! they can`t do nothing right! They are EVIL !

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