4 ms·

The outliers that surprised me the most are the big Chinese providers (ChinaNet and China Unicom) in the provider table. Despite them having much less IPv4 addr

The outliers that surprised me the most are the big Chinese providers (ChinaNet and China Unicom) in the provider table. Despite them having much less IPv4 addresses than users, they appear to make no significant effort to get IPv6 deployed. What are they doing instead? Putting all users behind carrier-grade NAT that don't need dedicated IPv4 addresses? That must be hundreds or even thousands of users behind a single address, considering that they must have a range of users (businesses and such) that need dedicated, static addresses for practical purposes, thereby reducing the IP address and user pools at a minimum 1:1 relationship. Or is it maybe the Chinese surveillance infrastructure that is not yet capable of snooping and manipulating IPv6 traffic, so the providers aren't allowed to roll it out?

dan0- 8y ago
I would bet it is a mix of columns A & B, but maintaining logs of CGNAT must have required significant developement effort and integration between the Chinese ISPs and the state surveillance apparatus. You'd think going IPv6 would be easier than doing all that :P
kccqzy 8y ago
> That must be hundreds or even thousands of users behind a single address No, ChinaNet has 2.86 users per IPv4 address. China Unicom has 2.79. Far less than Indian carriers. Source: TFA
- Slartie 8y ago
  I've seen those numbers, but they are idealized and only of theoretical nature. They do not account for unusable IPv4 addresses due to subnet structures, of which there are probably some within the theoretical IPv4 space available to a provider, and they do not account for self-used addresses by the provider that aren't within the blocks used to assign to customers. In addition, as I described, I assume the providers also have some customers who need fixed IPv4 addresses, maybe even whole ranges of them, like businesses often do. Those also greatly diminish the number of addresses left over for the "regular" customers.
  - heavenlyblue 8y ago
    >> They do not account for unusable IPv4 addresses due to subnet structures, of which there are probably some within the theoretical IPv4 space available to a provider You wouldn’t believe what a nation with an incredibly cheap labour can do. I can see how they just allocate a few engineers-technicians just to do allocation.
    - arghwhat 8y ago
      "And over there, we have our DHCP server. Well, he's at his lunch break, but that's where he sits."
  - pas 8y ago
    Aren't those numbers calculated the same way? So they should be directly comparable. Why do you think that the subnet structure problem is not present for the other ISPs?
    - Slartie 8y ago
      I've never claimed that. My claim was that the real number of customers per IP is probably magnitudes higher than the 2.xx factor from these numbers. The magnitude of "hundreds" might be a bit overblown, but that does not change the claims' general direction.
Canada 8y ago
In China you don’t get to accept incoming connections without a license anyway, so there’s no legitimate purpose for the vast majority of users, including businesses, to have a routable address. Users only need to be able to initiate connections to sites preapproved by the government to accept user generated data. To even call what China has “internet” is a bit of a stretch.
netheril96 8y ago
Actually the Chinese central government has issued multiple ordinances pushing IPv6 adoption, the latest in 2017/11/26. If you can read Chinese, you can read it here http://www.xinhuanet.com/2017-11/26/c_1122012631.htm http://www.xinhuanet.com/2017-11/26/c_1122012631.htm. But from my own experience, the actual execution of the plan is glacially slow. I don't know why. Chinese government usually is very good at execution, but not when it comes to IPv6.

dan0- 8y ago

I would bet it is a mix of columns A & B, but maintaining logs of CGNAT must have required significant developement effort and integration between the Chinese ISPs and the state surveillance apparatus. You'd think going IPv6 would be easier than doing all that :P

kccqzy 8y ago

> That must be hundreds or even thousands of users behind a single address No, ChinaNet has 2.86 users per IPv4 address. China Unicom has 2.79. Far less than Indian carriers. Source: TFA

Slartie 8y ago
I've seen those numbers, but they are idealized and only of theoretical nature. They do not account for unusable IPv4 addresses due to subnet structures, of which there are probably some within the theoretical IPv4 space available to a provider, and they do not account for self-used addresses by the provider that aren't within the blocks used to assign to customers. In addition, as I described, I assume the providers also have some customers who need fixed IPv4 addresses, maybe even whole ranges of them, like businesses often do. Those also greatly diminish the number of addresses left over for the "regular" customers.
- heavenlyblue 8y ago
  >> They do not account for unusable IPv4 addresses due to subnet structures, of which there are probably some within the theoretical IPv4 space available to a provider You wouldn’t believe what a nation with an incredibly cheap labour can do. I can see how they just allocate a few engineers-technicians just to do allocation.
  - arghwhat 8y ago
    "And over there, we have our DHCP server. Well, he's at his lunch break, but that's where he sits."
- pas 8y ago
  Aren't those numbers calculated the same way? So they should be directly comparable. Why do you think that the subnet structure problem is not present for the other ISPs?
  - Slartie 8y ago
    I've never claimed that. My claim was that the real number of customers per IP is probably magnitudes higher than the 2.xx factor from these numbers. The magnitude of "hundreds" might be a bit overblown, but that does not change the claims' general direction.

Canada 8y ago

In China you don’t get to accept incoming connections without a license anyway, so there’s no legitimate purpose for the vast majority of users, including businesses, to have a routable address. Users only need to be able to initiate connections to sites preapproved by the government to accept user generated data. To even call what China has “internet” is a bit of a stretch.

netheril96 8y ago

Actually the Chinese central government has issued multiple ordinances pushing IPv6 adoption, the latest in 2017/11/26. If you can read Chinese, you can read it here http://www.xinhuanet.com/2017-11/26/c_1122012631.htm http://www.xinhuanet.com/2017-11/26/c_1122012631.htm. But from my own experience, the actual execution of the plan is glacially slow. I don't know why. Chinese government usually is very good at execution, but not when it comes to IPv6.