Text/Chen Haoxing
2024 marks the 30th anniversary of China's full-featured access to the Internet. Over the past 30 years, the Internet has profoundly changed people's production and lifestyle, and promoted social changes.
Mao Wei, director of the National and Local Joint Engineering Research Center for the Internet Domain Name System, was interviewed by China News Service (CNS) and described in detail the five major changes in China's Internet development in the past 30 years.
Chinese Internet from 0 to 1
On April 20, 1994, under the impetus of Hu Qiheng, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and other Internet pioneers of the older generation, China fully connected to the Internet and became the 77th member of the international Internet family, officially opening the Internet era.
"But what is not known is that before the official access to the Internet, the beginning of China's Internet faced four problems. Mao Wei said.
The first is that there is no international support. In this regard, the older generation of Internet pioneers, represented by Hu Qiheng and Qian Hualin, a researcher at the Computer Network Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, went to the international community and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to communicate with the Chinese Academy of Sciences many times to express the Chinese Academy of Sciences' demand for connecting to the Internet, and finally received support.
The second is that there is no special financial support. In October 1989, China's National Computer and Network Facility (NCFC) was officially established. The main purpose of the NCFC is to build a network in the Zhongguancun area to share supercomputers, and access to the Internet is not planned, so there is no special financial support. Later, the project relied on self-financing from the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Natural Science Foundation and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Third, there is no policy precedent. At that time, the management policy implemented by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications stipulated that the leased lines were only for individual use and could not be shared. However, the nature of the internet is shared. Therefore, Hu Qiheng and Qian Hualin personally went to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications to visit Zhu Gaofeng, then vice minister of posts and telecommunications. Zhu Gaofeng expressed his support for the development of the Internet, and then the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications made bold innovations and broke through policy restrictions, accelerating the pioneering process of China's access to the Internet.
Fourth, there are certain technical obstacles. If you want to access the Internet, you must use a router, but at that time, the mainland could not buy a ready-made router, so you had to make it yourself. Qian Hualin led the research and development of routers, which solved the problem of LAN broadcasting storm caused by the inability to purchase foreign routers.
Mao Wei said that the older generation of Internet pioneers 30 years ago, under the east wind of reform and opening up, overcame many difficulties, and opened the door to the Internet for China with the spirit of mission, pioneering and innovative, truth-seeking and pragmatic scientists.
From 1000 to 20.13 million. CN domain name
If the Internet is like a tree with lush leaves, the Domain Name System (DNS) is the foundation of the tree, as the Internet's critical infrastructure.
A domain name is the first step to surfing the Internet, and it is the core hub and infrastructure of the Internet. If important websites related to the national economy and people's livelihood are registered under domain names managed by foreign countries, it will inevitably lead to the final communication control of the website being handed over to others, and it will not be possible to truly achieve the goal of independent development and healthy growth.
On May 21, 1994, with the assistance of Professor Qian Tianbai and the University of Karlsruhe in Germany, the Computer Network Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (now known as the Computer Network Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences) completed the China ccTLD. The setting of CN servers has changed the history of China's top-level domain name servers being placed abroad.
. CN's domain name registration path was quite slow due to the cumbersome registration process and lack of awareness at the beginning. During the three-year period 1994-1997, . Only about 1,000 CN domain names were registered, and between 2000 and 2002, the number of .CN domain name registrations hovered around 120,000.
The latest data shows that as of December 2023, . The number of CN domain names is 20.13 million. The large-scale development of CN top-level domain names has effectively improved the autonomy and security of the mainland network foundation.
In Mao Wei's view, Chinese netizens should have the right to choose to use Chinese to surf the Internet, and Chinese domain names are more suitable for Chinese use, and can better reflect Chinese identity, language identity, and cultural identity.
Multiple ramp-ups from 64K narrowband to 5G broadband
From the perspective of the evolution of basic network technology, China's Internet development can be divided into four stages of development:
From 1994 to 1999, the narrowband network stage was characterized by information query and one-way communication, which was mainly used in mail and file transmission. In 1999, China Telecom's broadband ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Loop) was officially put into commercial use, opening the first major acceleration of China Telecom's broadband and bringing China's Internet to the next stage.
From 2000 to 2009, broadband networks were characterized by interaction to write and publish information on the network, which was widely used in multimedia, e-commerce, games, social networking sites, etc.
From 2010 to 2019, a number of intelligent application services emerged in the mobile broadband network (3G, 4G) stage, characterized by mobile applications and smartphones.
Since 2020, the Internet has been characterized by the integration of a new generation of information technology, serving the construction of digital information infrastructure and the development of the digital economy in mainland China.
Mao Wei pointed out that the key nodes in the development of the Internet include the introduction of smartphones and the popularization of broadband. With the advent of smartphones and the popularity of 3G technology, ordinary people have started to use mobile phones to access the Internet, which has promoted the growth of the number of Internet users. The popularization of broadband enables users to enjoy richer multimedia and real-time interactive experiences, which in turn will make the Internet penetrate into millions of households.
Smooth transition from IPv4 to IPv6
Over the past 30 years, with the development of the Internet in China, technological innovations have also emerged. However, with the growing demand for basic Internet services, various technologies have accelerated the process of exhaustion of IPv4 (Internet Communication Protocol Version 4) addresses, and the migration to IPv6 (Internet Communication Protocol Version 6) has become an urgent task.
Mao Wei introduced that IPv4 and IPv6 are like two completely different languages, which have made great changes in network communication protocols. The requirements for basic network technologies are how to make IPv4 and IPv6 interconnected, and how to make a smooth transition from IPv4 to IPv6, so that ordinary users are unaware of the use of the network.
In 2003, the China Next Generation Internet Demonstration Project (CNGI), jointly initiated by the National Development and Reform Commission and other eight ministries and commissions, was officially launched, marking a new year for the development of IPv6 in mainland China. In 2008, China Unicom used IPv6 to build an official website for the first time, becoming an important IPv6 demonstration application for the world in China, and in 2022, China Unicom applied IPv6 evolution technology to the Winter Olympics for the first time, demonstrating China's IPv6 achievements to the world.
Mao Wei said that in the stage of moving towards the large-scale promotion of IPv6, China's network technology workers have explored vivid Chinese practices while solving the technical problems of major cyber countries, and formed rules and standards that affect global network interconnection.
From a cyber power to a cyber power
At the end of June 2008, the number of mainland Internet users, the number of broadband Internet users, and the number of national domain name registrations all ranked first in the world, becoming a veritable Internet power.
Mao Wei believes that China's Internet is moving from a network power to a network power, and breakthroughs and contributions in network infrastructure technology are important supports. In terms of the core basic technology of the Internet, China must reach the world-class level in order to be called a strong country.
In the past, China has lagged relatively far behind in standards development and technological innovation, and Chinese internet engineers have struggled to fill this gap.
Hu Daoyuan, a professor of computer science at Tsinghua University, contributed the first international Internet technical standard (RFC) in Chinese mainland recognized by the International Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in 1996, but it was not until 2004 that a second international Internet technical standard was established, and the contribution frequency was low. However, with the continuous development of China's Internet, companies such as Huawei have gradually increased their investment in standards development and technological innovation.
In 2022, for the first time, Huawei became the world's No. 1 organization in terms of annual RFC contributions, with 38 articles. Previously, Huawei ranked second in the world in terms of the number of international Internet technology standards it has released.
Mao Wei said, as Academician Hu Qiheng said, "The Internet is like a big ship, which was originally built by technical experts from Europe and the United States. "China's Internet, which has come from behind, has injected new vitality into the development of the global Internet while developing itself.
Source: The country is a through train
Editor: Zhuge Ruixin
Editor-in-charge: Wei Xi