China Next Generation Internet


The China Next Generation Internet project is a five-year plan initiated by the Chinese government with the purpose of gaining a significant position in the future development of the Internet through the early adoption of IPv6.

Key CNGI goals

According to a brochure entitled "CNGI-CERNET2/61X", the CNGI effort's key tasks were as follows:
IPv6 was selected as key technology. The United States has almost one third of the theoretical maximum IPv4 addresses, while China has more high-speed Internet users than IP addresses and the largest Internet user base of any country. With the implementation of IPv6, China planned to avoid imminent problems of IPv4 address exhaustion.

History

The origins of CNGI date to 2001 when 57 members of the Chinese Academy of Science and Chinese Academy of Engineering wrote a letter to the State Council recommending construction of the next generation academic Internet. In 2002 the National Development and Reform Commission organized a study of the topic, and in 2003 the study group submitted a strategic report. After authorization, the CNGI was then launched under the auspices of eight ministries: NDRC as the lead, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Information Industry, the State Council Information Office, Chinese Academy of Science, Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the National Natural Science Foundation.

Current status

As of October 2009, the CNGI effort comprises six nationwide backbone networks and 39 GigaPOPs, which extends the next generation footprint to over 20 major cities and over 300 academic, industrial, and government research campuses within China. Five backbones are commercial, with an additional academic research network operated by CERNET, which is known as CNGI-CERNET2. CNGI also encompasses two exchange points in Beijing and Shanghai for interconnecting these backbones and for international links to APAN, GEANT, and Internet2.
China showcased CNGI and the IPv6 network infrastructure at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing for the website www.beijing2008.cn. The launching of the domain ipv6.beijing2008.cn was witnessed by officials from Tsinghua University, the CERNET, the Technology Department of BOCOG and Sohu.com.
Everything from security cameras, taxis, to the Olympic events cameras are networked by IPv6; the events are streamed live over the Internet while networked cars are able to monitor traffic conditions readily.

CNGI-CERNET2 backbone

As of October 2009, the CNGI-CERNET2 backbone runs native IPv6 to connect 25 PoPs in 25 cities. Most links run at 2.5 Gbit/s with 10 Gbit/s connections between Beijing-Wuhan-Guangzhou and Wuhan-Nanjing-Shanghai. Access links run at 1 Gbit/s, 2.5 Gbit/s, or 10 Gbit/s.

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