A study on application of IPv6 industrial Internet in coal preparation industry

The network currently applied in coal preparation industry is principally the IPv4 protocol-based industrial Internet. With the advances in development of digital and smart mines and ever-increasing enlargement of scales of coal cleaning plant, intelligent device have found extensive applications. Due to rising demand for IP addresses, the traditional IPv4 resources as mentioned-above has gradually become depleted, restricting consequently the upgrading of digital infrastructure in the coal preparation industry. Following an introduction to the background of emergence of IPv6 and its development prospect, the author presents an analysis of the current state in application of industrial Internet in coal preparation industry and suggests its widespread use in coal-related enterprises. Analysis shows that with the use of IPv6, the problem regarding insufficiency of address space can be eliminated and its use in industrial Internet should be preferably made in the following three steps: first in subsystems of Internet then in trial use in the industry′s Internet and finally in extensive use at the time when the industrial Internet reaches a mature stage. It is proposed to develop mine network devices capable of providing full coverage under coal preparation environment, IPv6 protocol-based application systems and equipment hardware controllers; work out a general plan for extensive application of IPv6, provide digital and technical support and guarantee for making investment on digital development of coal enterprises; deploy protocol exchange and conversion platforms for single use of IPv4, simultaneous use of IPv4/IPv6 and exclusive use of IPv6; develop unified access and service systems, facilitate round-trip service transmission between individual net regions; develop security protection systems for providing a better protection of the networks self-organized based on VxLAN+EVPN and IPv6 protocols; and develop unified automatic and intelligent operation and maintenance support platform for realization of monitoring, management and control of all coal washing processes with well organized networks. It is pointed out that all the enterprise engaging in coal preparation operations ought to vigorously promote the extensive use of IPv6 to realize as early as possible digital transition and intelligent upgrading, so as to provide a strong support to sustainable development of coal preparation industry.