Huawei 'New IP' Project Raises Political, Technical Issues
Huawei's proposed "New IP" sparked charges the company and possibly the Chinese government are trying to hijack the internet. ICANN, ITU and others said the protocol's specifications and purported uses are so hazy it can't be considered as an internet replacement. Huawei said it's trying to improve existing IP versions 4 and 6 and denied it's working for the Chinese government. The project's link to Huawei, however, "is a guarantee, in the current geopolitical environment, that it will be politicized," blogged Internet Governance Project founder Milton Mueller.
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ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector Study Group 13 created focus group Network 2030 in 2018 to study "the capabilities of networks for the year 2030 and beyond," SG13 Chairman Leo Lehmann blogged. Earlier this year, Focus Group Network 2030 chair Richard Li, Huawei chief architect of future networks, presented the concept of New IP. It isn't a "deliverable" for Network 2030 "but might supply solutions for scenarios considered by the Focus Group," Lehmann wrote.
New IP is "an extension, improvement and optimization of the existing IPv4 and IPv6 with a goal of expanding the applicable domains of the Internet Technology," Li emailed us. It's intended to connect more devices and networks and add more capabilities and services to the network for emerging applications such as high-precision, time-engineered communications. New IP can be used for operational technology (OT) -- hardware and software that "detects or causes a change, through the direct monitoring and/or control of industrial equipment, assets, processes and events," he said. The operations often involve commands that must travel from one point to another within a certain time (delay), he wrote. "The current IP cannot guarantee delay" and it also allows packets to be dropped, potentially rendering operational commands unusable, he said.
When news of New IP emerged, parts of the internet community resisted. "Although not stated explicitly, it is clear that the long-term vision is for this new architecture to supersede TCP/IP [transmission control protocol/IP] and replace the Internet," wrote Marco Hogewoning, European Regional Internet Registry RIPE Network Coordination Centre Public Policy and Internet Governance acting manager. The most problematic part of the proposal isn't the technology but the "fundamental beliefs behind it, which represent a departure from the Internet's fundamental values of openness, transparency and putting the end user in control."
ICANN also investigated. In an Oct. 27 report, Chief Technology Officer Alain Durand wrote, "At its best, New IP can be seen as a set of desired features to implement the use case described in Network 2030. However, there are no publicly available, definite, and complete descriptions of what New IP is," and it must be seen as a "work in progress."
It presents the concept of "ManyNets," where instead of a single network, the internet would become a "patchwork of networks loosely interconnected via gateways" Durand wrote. That would make pervasive monitoring easier by allowing routers, switches and so on to have full access to exactly which user is doing what, he said. Content providers would have access to the identity of every user connecting to them, increasing oversight of published content. He said it won't be compatible with IPv4 or IPv6 infrastructure. Li, however, said New IP "has been designed to be interoperable with IPv4, IPv6 and many others."
"The 'ITU is trying to take over the internet' meme has been around for a while, and I think the internet community filters its treatment of New IP through that narrative, especially since Huawei found an easier path in ITU to prepare the way than they did" in the Internet Engineering Task Force, Mueller emailed us. Had this idea come from, say, Denmark or Brazil, the community mightn't have been as dismissive, he said.
Asked if New IP is a Chinese government initiative, Li said: "Not at all!" When work began on the proposal in 2015, Li said, he discussed it with some European and British carriers and service providers "and was pointed to going along an evolutionary path instead of a disruptive one so as to maximally protect the existing investment." Unfortunately, he added, "new IP, which is a technical issue, has been politicized."