International Law

China Internet Death by 2010?

By Stan

Interesting story in China Tech News, although that first sentence is a bit melodramatic (as is my post title):

The Internet in China may soon run out. According to the China Internet Network Information Center, under the current allocation speed, China’s IPv4 address resources can only meet the demand of 830 more days and if no proper measures are taken by then, new Chinese netizens will not be able to gain normal access to the Internet.

Li Kai, director in charge of the IP business for CNNIC’s international department, says that if a netizen wants to get access to the Internet, an IP address will be necessary to analyze the domain name and view the pages. At present, most of the networks in China use IPv4 addresses. As a basic resource for the Internet, the IPv4 addresses are limited and 80% of the final allocation IP addresses have been used. By the current allocation speed, China’s IPv4 address resource can only meet the demand of 830 more days. If there is no available new resource by then, new netizens will not be able to gain normal access to the Internet and the business expansion of network operators will be impossible.

This issue has been floating around for several years now, apparently with no resolution yet. What’s kind of cool is that the predictions made back in the early/mid 2000s about how long it would take before IP addresses under the IPv4 system ran out seem to be fairly accurate.

I wouldn’t worry too much, though. New solutions are on the way. Note this bit of wisdom:

Man has dominion over the lowly IP address, and the shortage can be resolved with current technologies.

Full post as published by China Hearsay on September 25, 2008 (boomark / email).