China has built a world-leading infrastructure for IPv6, or internet protocol version 6, as the nation's 4G, 5G and fixed broadband networks have all been upgraded to support IPv6, the nation's top industry regulator said on Oct 11.

IPv6 is the most recent version of internet protocol, the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the internet. It allows much higher theoretical limits on the number of IP addresses than the current IPv4 system, and is better designed for the internet of things era.

Han Xia, chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said on Oct 11 that as of the end of September, the number of users who had obtained IPv6 addresses in China had increased to 1.634 billion, up from 74 million at the end of 2017.