China launches IPV6 Internet

With the launch of the first backbone network of the next-generation Internet in China, the country is expected to dramatically narrow its gap with the world's leaders, officials and experts said.

Eight departments of the Chinese Government announced on Saturday in Beijing that CERNET2 was going into formal operation.

"We were a learner and follower in the development of the first generation Internet, but we have caught up with world's leaders in the next-generation Internet, become a first mover, and won respect and attention from the international community," said Wu Jianping, director of the expert committee of the China Education and Research Network (CERNET) and a mastermind in the development of the next-generation Internet in China.

CERNET2 is the biggest next-generation Internet network in operation in the world and connects 25 universities in 20 cities. The speed in the backbone network reaches 2.5 to 10 gigabits per second and connects the universities at a speed of 1 to 10 gigabits per second.

A trial on CERNET2 between Beijing and Tianjin on December 7 achieved a speed of 40 gigabits per second, the highest in the world in real applications.

CERNET2 is also the first network based on pure Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) technology, one major characteristic between the current Internet and the next-generation Internet.