A Future Network - China and Huawei’s Proposal to Reinvent the Internet

“… emerging applications like Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (AR/VR), holographic communications, etc. [raises] new requirements to the network and involves innumerable physical and virtual objects, which require more efficient and customised network services. Current Internet Protocol (IP) that aims to connect regional academic and military networks was invented half a century ago. The original IP design philosophy like fixed address length, binding machines to specific locations, and others are not sufficient anymore to tackle those challenges.”

The UN’s International Telecommunication Union heard proposals of a new framework for future IP, called New IP, to enable the production of a stronger network with the ability to support future applications.

It is not unknown that internet governance is often understood alongside political and economic power in the 21st century. The New IP proposal put forward by state-run Chinese companies has been criticised for China wanting to produce technological infrastructure which they can control. The internet is currently unofficially regulated by US corporations like Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google with no particular centralised oversight to how it is governed.

It is being claimed that New IP will deliver faster service delivery due to no DNS query delays. It will also enable customised functions to be performed on data packets alongside a more flexible body of functions.

It is yet to be seen how much control this proposed technology will have IP addresses and how tracking mechanisms used for processes such as authentication and account authorisation will be monitored.