Marbridge Daily reports:

Xie Jianping, head of the MII (Ministry of Information Industry) Technology Department’s Decimal Network Standards workgroup, presided over the announcement of the launch of a ten-digit network developed by the workgroup yesterday. The network is based on the domestically developed IPv9 protocol, and has a domain name root analysis center in Shanghai, with related systems in Beijing and Changsha also going into operations.

IPv9 was first mooted in 2004. The internet today operates on IPv4 (IP stands for internet protocol) and the next standard is meant to be IPv6.

The protocols are the addressing schemes for a network (such as the internet). The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) explains:

Currently there are two types of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses in active use: IP version 4 (IPv4) and IP version 6 (IPv6). IPv4 was initially deployed on 1 January 1983 and is still the most commonly used version. IPv4 addresses are 32-bit numbers often expressed as 4 octets in “dotted decimal” notation (for example, 192.0.32.67). Deployment of the IPv6 protocol began in 1999. IPv6 addresses are 128-bit numbers and are conventionally expressed using hexadecimal strings (for example, 1080:0:0:0:8:800:200C:417A).

The problem with IPv4 is that the number of devices connected to the internet is rapidly taking all the available IP addresses. Even with private networks connected to public networks (using NAT, network address translation), we’re slowly running out of numbers to assign.

IPv6 is meant to provide a big jump in possible addresses: from 3.7 billion with IPv4 to (I kid you not) 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 with IPv6 (see the Arstechnica link at the bottom of the post).

IPv6 has been slow rolling out, but most newer equipment and computers support it. It will gradually displace IPv4.

Er, maybe not in China if Xie Jianping gets his way. Not only is he a member of MII’s Decimal Networks Standards Group, he’s also the guy who developed IPv9 back in 2004.

IPv9, from what I can gather, is similar to telephone numbers. Think of developing an address by country, region, city, device, etc., all in ten numbers. It is claimed that test networks have been successfully deployed.

While it is claimed that it is interoperable with IPv4 and IPv6, it transfers data in a completely different way. Without getting too technical, it sounds like a old-style phone network with limited flexibility and lots of addressing overhead.

That it comes from a “working group” at the MII would seem to give it some legitimacy. However, IPv9 has no international stature. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-governmental organization of engineers who set internetworking standards, doesn’t even recognize it. There’s no interest from Huawei or ZTE. Other than the working group and a cooperative reporter, it has no domestic support.

Decimal networking is going nowhere.

The article (Marbridge aggregated it from the Shanghai Evening Post) closes with:

The current hexadecimal network addressing system is controlled by America, requiring China to pay fees - including domain name registration fees, address resolution fees, and channel resource fees - of over RMB 500 bln per year.

That’s just ridiculous. There is no way China is paying US$70 billion per year to the US for internet addressing. An exaggeration based on a confusion to promote a fallacy.

The whole story reminds me of Revolution #9 from the Beatles’ White Album. Long, strange, and with a backwards message.

Further reading
Arstechnica has an excellent overview of IPv6

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