State-controlled media on Tuesday covered the proceedings of the third China IPv6 Innovation and Development Conference, at which officials revealed t

China pushes for network upgrade blitz as IPv6 adoption slows

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2024-07-10 07:30:04

State-controlled media on Tuesday covered the proceedings of the third China IPv6 Innovation and Development Conference, at which officials revealed that as of May 2024 the Middle Kingdom was home to 794 million users of the protocol, and that 64.56 percent of mobile traffic – plus 21.21 percent of fixed network traffic – is carried on networks that employ it.

In July last year, the previous edition of the conference delivered news that 763 million active IPv6 users could be found as of May 2023 – up from the 697 million active users China's State Council counted as of July 2022.

Even accounting for the slightly longer reporting periods, it seems inescapable that adoption of IPv6 in the region has slowed.

The nation is, however, closing in on goals to achieve an IPv6 user population of 800 million by 2025, plus 70 per cent of mobile traffic running over the protocol. A target to have 15 percent of fixed traffic on IPv6 has been met.

And last year Beijing issued an order that has mighty potential to accelerate IPv6: a requirement that all new Wi-Fi routers sold in China must be capable of running IPv6 and use it by default once powered on.