In May 2021, FITI (The Future Internet Technology Infrastructure) organization obtained 4096 Autonomous System (AS) numbers distributed by APNIC. This doubles the number of AS numbers previously available to the Chinese Internet system.

An Autonomous System (AS) is a set of routers, with specific routing strategies, and is managed by independent entities, and is the basic component of the global Internet. An ISP must have an open and officially registered AS number to become an independent network entity to join the global Internet.

AS numbers are assigned by IANA (the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) to each regional Internet Registration Authority (such as APNIC), and that authority then allocates the AS number to the network entities in the region.

FITI has been developed by Tsinghua University and 40 other universities in China and is the first important national science and technology infrastructure project in China. FITI is mainly based on pure IPv6 technology, covers 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government, and aims to provide an international leading open test environment for research and design of future Internet architecture.

At the core of FITI is the understanding that it must be a part of the global Internet, it must have a real Internet environment, but can support experimentation at the same time. Therefore test environments created by all users on FITI is real, with real IP address and real AS numbers.

The 4096 autonomous domains acquired by FITI enables it to support a very large-scale future Internet test environment of 4096 heterogeneous networks at the same time. Each heterogeneous network means having an independent public as number and a global routable / 32 IPv6 address block. Such a large-scale Internet experimental environment is unique in the world and will provide an excellent basis for future internet development in China.