China’s ahead of the IPv6 curve.
Since most of my readers (all 2 of you) know nothing about how the internet works, I’ll leave a lot of the technical details behind the article in this post. Trust me, they would bore you (and me) stiff.
Basically, the internet has been running out of IP addresses (every website has an address) because of the inherent mathematical limits of the current technology used to carry information across the ‘Net. For a few years now, a newer protocol (IPv6) has been invented but not actually used much of anywhere. Apparently, China is ahead of the United States, South Korea, and Japan in rolling the new technology out, and they hope to have the technology running on a trial basis by the end of this year. The Chinese government is hoping that the early implementation of IPv6 technology will allow Chinese telecom companies to get their new IPv6-enabled products to market before the current leaders of the current technology (IPv4), American companies Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks, can do so. The goal is to make Chinese tech companies more competitive on the world scene. Only time will tell if it works out well for the Chinese or if consumers will be brand-loyal to Juniper and Cisco.
