The Internet Protocol IP is the heart of TCP/IP and the most important protocol in the network layer. The IP layer receives packets from a lower layer (the network interface layer) and sends them to a higher layer, the TCP or UDP layer; conversely, the IP layer transmits packets received from the TCP or UDP layer to the lower layers. address (destination address) of the host that sent it [ [1] ].
In order to implement TCP/IP, each device in the network needs to be properly configured with the appropriate information. In particular, each device needs to be assigned a local IP address in order for the network to recognize the device. An IP address is a numeric label, similar to a street number, expressed as a "dot+address", where each decimal digit represents a string of eight binary digits - 0 and 1. A router that understands which data to transmit to which device needs to know which IP address to transmit to which device needs to know which IP address to transmit to which device. A router must use an IP address if it is to understand which device it needs to transmit data to. tcp/ip broadcasts data to the router, using a specific IP address to distinguish the recipient of the data. The router reads the IP address and then forwards this data to the computer at that address.
Every server or device connected to today's Internet is assigned an IP address of its own. In the IoT world of the future, every single device, no matter how small, will also have to be assigned an IP address. So the problem arises that due to the sheer number of devices that need to be networked, it is easy to outnumber the number of available IP addresses - at least in the current IPv4. IPv4 provides about 4.3 billion unique addresses, most of which have already been assigned to pre-existing devices.
According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) in 2010, China's IP demand will increase to 34.5 billion over the next 5 years, including 1 billion for the mobile Internet, 10 billion for the Internet of Things (IoT), and 500 million for the fixed Internet (taking into account the 33% utilization rate of IP addresses). And then to consider that by 2025, the increase in demand will more than double with the deployment of 5G and the proliferation of smart devices. Universalizing the next-generation Internet Protocol as soon as possible is one solution, with the IPv6 protocol theoretically expanding to as many as 340 addresses to the 11th power of 1 million, far more than all possible IoT devices will need. But there are a number of factors that need to be taken into account to predict the number of global IP addresses in five years.
Engineers have spent the last decade or so trying to extend the life of the IPv4 protocol and slow down the time when IP resources run out. For example, NAT technology can go a long way toward alleviating the IPv4 address shortage and protecting private internal networks by providing firewall functionality; IPv4 is completely incompatible with IPv6, so we need to introduce dual stacks, tunneling, or NAT64 to solve the compatibility problem at additional cost; and IPv4 can be slowed down by having granular control of resources and reclaiming IP addresses that are no longer in use. We also need to slow down IP address exhaustion by having granular control over resources and reclaiming IP addresses that are no longer in use.
However, the development of IPv6 has become a globally recognized solution for the next-generation Internet, and the global competition to catch up with the popularization of IPv6 is taking shape. ipv6 is a revolution in network topology. There is no need for a second-hand relay or P2P hole-punching, and two IoT devices can communicate very well and freely with each other. Each device also doesn't need to hide behind a gateway to be upgraded to a first-class citizen of the networked world. And because it's all direct IP, Ipv6 networks can reduce network latency by 10-30%. The IPv4 protocol will also eventually be replaced by IPv6 in the foreseeable future. And in the next five years, the IPv6 development trend will remain the same, and by 2025, IPv6 will occupy most of the market, 5G makes the Internet of Everything possible, and the predicted results will be based on IPv6.
According to the data provided by APNIC Labs on the number of global IPv6 users and the penetration rate of IPv6 users (the organization's measurement tool may be inaccurate in measuring the data for China ), as of June 2020, the top five countries/regions in terms of global IPv6 users are India (358 million), the US (143 million), China (120 million), Brazil (50 million), and Japan (40 million), in that order.
In terms of the domain name system, according to data provided by Hurricane Electric, as of June 2020, 1,489 of the 1,511 top-level domains in the world support IPv6, accounting for 98.5% of the total, and of those 1,511 top-level domains, 1,485 authoritative servers support IPv6, accounting for 98.3% of the total number of top-level domains. In addition, there are at least 15,114,074 domains with AAAA records tested globally***, representing 5.9% of the total domain volume. Among the top 1 million Alexa ranked websites,*** there are 203,197 (20.3%) URLs providing IPv6 addresses in AAAA records. At the same time, more than 51,000 URLs globally*** provide IPv6 access through IPv6-started domain names.
According to data from We Are Social's Global Digital Report, the number of globally connected internet users has increased at a steady rate over the last five years, with 3.42 billion internet users globally in 2015; 3.77 billion globally in 2016; 4.02 billion globally in 2017; 4.39 billion globally in 2018; and in 2019, globally reached 4.54 billion people. The number of Internet users as a percentage of the world's total population has grown from 46% to 59%. The growth trend shows a steady and gradual increase in the number of Internet users worldwide.
In the last five years, Africa and South Asia have seen significant growth in the number of Internet users, while the developed world has seen small increases in comparison. Overall, Internet users are not evenly distributed across the globe, and remain small in most parts of Africa and South Asia. So although developed countries, such as the United States, are about to reach a bottleneck in terms of the number of Internet users, globally, the growth trend will remain largely unchanged for the next five years. With the improvement of the social system, more and more older people are using the Internet, which is also an aspect of the growth in the number of Internet users, and it is expected that the number of Internet users in 2025 will likely exceed 6 billion. Considering that private networking is dominated by basic needs such as socializing on mobile devices, with one IP address per capita as the base, at least 6 billion IP addresses will be needed.
Since the introduction of the "Smart Earth" in 2008, the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) has been rapidly recognized globally and has become the development direction for a new generation of information technology. Today, the number of IoT connections has exploded, and the commercial application of IoT has taken up half of the market, with applications in logistics, transportation, construction, and healthcare having been developed, but still in a fragmented, small-scale state in areas that require higher levels of intelligence, such as intelligent transportation, manufacturing, and energy.
From a global perspective, the IoT industry is in the process of establishing and improving, and IoT industry applications are still in the primary stage, but with the development of 5G, AI, and blockchain technologies, the industry will enter an accelerated development stage. In order to seize the first opportunity for the development of the new round of IoT industry, countries have introduced policies for strategic layout. The U.S. "SMART Internet of Things Act, the EU's 14-point action plan, Japan's "i-Japan strategy", South Korea's "u-Korea" strategic plan, Singapore's "next-generation I-Hub", and "next-generation I-Hub" are just a few examples. The "Next Generation I-Hub" program of Singapore, etc., all regard IoT as an important strategic goal for current development. According to market analyst firm Goldner (Gartner) estimates that the number of global IoT devices reached 26 billion in 2020, and the IoT market size reached $1.9 trillion.
The predictions of major organizations on the future development of the global Internet of Things are shown in the table below:
Comprehensive predictions of major organizations, with the growth rate of the Internet of Things in various countries around the world, smart devices can break through 75 billion in 2025, and the Internet of Everything wants every smart device to be able to have an IP address of its own, and the global need for IP addresses also reaches 75 billion.
Technical barriers to the development of the Internet of Things may lead to smart devices in the popularization of users is limited and affect the demand for IP addresses for smart devices. According to the "2014-2019 China Internet of Things Industry Application Fields Market Demand and Investment Forecast Analysis Report", the Internet of Things requires multi-industry, multi-disciplinary knowledge and technology synergistic cooperation, the Internet of Things enterprises, especially those engaged in the production of products across multiple layers and the provision of services, need to have a strong communication technology, signal processing technology, information processing technology and other professional research and development capabilities, but also need to have a strong It also needs to have strong software development capability of underlying protocols, micro-operating systems, embedded software and information processing application platforms that are closely integrated with hardware. This requirement is also a big challenge to complete in 5 years.
On the other hand, NAT avoids frequent modification of internal IP, can be used as a firewall to protect the internal network, and has a place in the rapid deployment of IPv6, so that for a large number of smart devices, there may not be a need for independent IP addresses.
The IPv6-based next-generation Internet is rapidly changing the face and pattern of the existing Internet, and in the future will become the cornerstone to support the rapid development of cutting-edge technologies and industries, and powerfully support the development of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, the mobile Internet, the industrial Internet, 5G, and so on, to give rise to more new businesses, new applications, and new scenarios, which will ultimately benefit each and every Internet user. The global industry is ready for the rapid popularization of IPv6. Through the consideration of the previous factors, it is expected that after five years, the demand for global IP addresses will be around 50 billion, and considering that the utilization rate of IP addresses is not 100%, the demand for global IP addresses will be more than 65 billion.
[[1]] Ye Zhou.Research on Key Technologies for IPv4 to IPv6 Transition[D]. Jiangsu:Yangzhou University,2009. DOI:10.7666/d.y1702450.