(Yicai Global) Oct. 13 -- China is a global infrastructure leader in terms of Internet Protocol version 6, an IP address technology that should replace the current overcrowded IPv4, according to experts in the field.

China's available IPv6 resources make up one-fifth of the world's total, Han Xia, the chief engineer of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said during an industry conference yesterday.

A worldwide shift to the fresh connectivity protocol is a crucial part of deploying fifth-generation wireless networks, Big Data, and the Internet of Things.

The number of IPv6 users in China has surged since 2017 when the domestic positioning was specified, Han added. China aims to fully adopt the faster and more powerful interoperability technology across its networks.

Online traffic which uses the new protocol of assigning IP addresses accounts for 22.9 percent of all in China, enabling the country to accomplish this year’s goal in advance, said Wu Hequan, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

The related penetration rate is impressive. China's number of active IPv6 users reached 551 million as of August, or 54.5 percent of the total, according to Wu.

All of the top 100 domestic commercial websites and applications in terms of user numbers have moved on to IPv6, Wu added. Moreover, telecoms firms are accelerating the shift by upgrading old equipment.

China has successfully adopted IPv6+ networks in fields including the public sector, finance, energy, manufacturing, and telecoms, making up 80 percent of such global commercial deployment, said Hu Kewen, senior vice president at Huawei Technologies.

The world's second-largest economy should further promote the application of IPv6 in future scenarios such as smart city, digital village, energy internet, and online healthcare, said Sheng Ronghua, vice minister at the Cyberspace Administration of China.

Editor: Zhang Yushuo, Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi