China Builds a Better Internet

This is a interesting article about IPV6 internet development. To see the full article from here.

In research labs throughout China, engineers are busy working on another project that the Chinese government plans to unveil at the Olympics: China's Next Generation Internet (CNGI), a faster, more secure, more mobile version of the current one.

CNGI is the centerpiece of China's plan to steal leadership away from the United States in all things Internet and information technology.

The strategy, outlined in China's latest five-year plan, calls for the country to transition its economy from one based almost entirely on manufacturing to one that produces its own scientific and technological breakthroughs—using a new and improved version of today's dominant innovation platform, the Internet. "CNGI is the culmination of this revolutionary plan" to turn China into the world's innovation capital, says Wu Hequan, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the chairman of the CNGI Expert Committee, the group overseeing the project. "We will use it as a way to break through and be competitive in the global economic market."

According to Chinese and U.S. sources familiar with the project, the Chinese government has already invested close to $200 million in CNGI and has created a special office of the State Council dedicated solely to the project. China's major telecommunications companies, each of which is responsible for building a portion of the network, have also spent hundreds of millions of dollars so far. Today, CNGI connects 100 universities, 100 research institutes and 100 companies in 20 cities. At the Beijing Olympics in 2008, China plans to use CNGI for everything from broadcasting the events to controlling the Olympic facilities.

Actually, China has invested in IPV6 projects for long time according to this article,

Main IPv6 projects in China
1998 China Education and Research Network (“CERNET”) starts research on IPv6.
1999 BII Group begins R&D for commercialization of IPv6
2000 BII Group runs the test-bed for commercialization of IPv6, interconnects with 6BONE and others.
2001 BII Group and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications start a joint trial project.
2002 March RITT and BII Group start 6TNet (IPv6 Telecom Trial Network) project.
2002 May China Telecom Hunan Province starts IPv6 trial network.
2002 October China Telecom starts IPv6 trial projects in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.
End of 2002 China Netcom, China Mobile, China Unicom prepare for IPv6 trial project
2003 March Beijing IPv6 area network project starts.

_ IPv6 address procurement organizations in China (as of March 2003)
China Education and Research Network CERNET-CN-20000426 2001:0250::/32
China Education and Research Network CERN/CH-20001217 3FFE:8120:: /28
China BII Group BII/CN-20010410 3FFE:81B0::/28
China Academy of Sciences CSTNET/CN-20020123 3FFE:8330::/28
China BII Group BIIV6-CN-20020704 2001:/03FB::/32
China Telecom CHINANET-20020830 2001:OC68::/32
China Academy of Sciences CNNIC CSTNET-CNNIC-20021015 2001:OCCO::/32

China put a large scale backbone network CERNET2 in operation in 2004. This nestwork CERTNET2 is purely based on the Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) technology, which the organization claims was the first and would soon become a standard for others to follow. CERTNET2 was called the biggest network running the next generation Internet since it connected 25 universities in about 20 cities. Tests had proven that the network was capable of reaching speeds of about 40 gigabits per second, setting a record for real-world applications, while the average speeds were about 2-10 gigabits for universities. It was planned that 100 universities would be connected by the network. (source)