MUMBAI: Another American bastion falls to the Chinese Dragon. China has announced today the launch of the first backbone network of the next-generation Internet, Cernet2 (China Education and Research Network).

The GenNext Internet network, which connects 25 universities in 20 cities in China, has been able to achieve a monstrous speed of up to 40 gigabits per second during a trial run conducted on 7 December. This is a record for real-world applications, where the average speeds are about 2-10 GPS for universities.

The Cernet2 coverage is expected to expand to 100 universities soon. With the launch of Cernet2, China expects to 'gatecrash' into the league of world's internet leaders. Cernet expert committee director Wu Jianping has been quoted in a China Daily report as saying, "We were a learner and follower in the development of the first generation Internet, but we have caught up with world's leaders in the next-generation Internet, become a first mover, and won respect and attention from the international community."

The launch of Cernet2 also saw China inventing its first network based on pure Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) technology. What is significant is the IPv6 will now enable China to generate more IP addresses. In the current IPv4-powered scenario, the United States controls 74 per cent of the 4 billion IP addresses.

Cernet2 is financially supported by the China Next-generation Internet (CNGI) fund of 1.4 billion yuan ($169 million). The fund was set up by National Development Reform Commission (NDRC) to support six next-generation Internet networks.