How Do You Say "Industry Standard" In Mandarin?

Cell phone towers are appearing in some parts of the world where there have never been telephone wires. Similarly, China could leapfrog western internet technology with its spring into the next Internet Protocol (IPv6).

For the record, at 10% of their population, China has a little over half as many internet users as the US at 123 million. But this figure increased by 20% last year according to a China Internet Network Information survey, where the US is at more than two-thirds of its population already.

What does IPv6 do differently? Devices connect automatically, require less direct management, and every device has a unique ID, so instead of calling your spouse to ask what groceries you're short on, you call your refrigerator. Unique ID's also cut down on anonymity, making possible the parallel internet (a la Seth Godin circa 2001), where everyone is wearing a "don't like my driving?" sticker. By using 16 decimal values in each address vs. 4, it also allows for a number of addresses that dwarfs the current 4.3 billion, of which US organizations currently use about 30% of the total.

The plan is to showcase the new protocol's capabilities at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where it will monitor everything from thermostats to traffic on local roadways. Unlike the launch of Russia's Sputnik 51 years earlier, this one is not a surprise but may still leave us playing a similar game of catch-up.