A new web technology being championed by China is allowing a short-term gap in its so-called “Great Firewall,” which blocks Chinese Internet users from sites blacklisted by the government in Beijing. Experts say how the gap is closed could have ramifications for the entire world.
The gap exists because of IPv6, the next generation of Internet protocol designed to replace IPv4. The change is needed because the old system is about to run out of IP addresses, the combination of numbers that identify your computer over the Internet. IPv6 will offer a nearly infinite number of IP addresses.
The lack of new IPv4 addresses is being felt most acutely in China, which was allotted a relatively small share of IPv4 addresses when they were doled out in the 1980s. At the time, some four billion IP addresses seemed like enough for the entire world. But with the proliferation of networkable devices, IP addresses are becoming a scarce commodity.
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