China Prepares to Launch Alternate Internet

Netfree writes "The Chinese government has announced plans to launch an alternate Internet root system with new Chinese character domains for dot-com and dot-net. This may mean that Chinese Internet users will no longer rely on ICANN, the U.S.-backed domain name administrator, and, as one commentator notes, could be the beginning of the end of the globally interoperable Internet."

A long time coming...

Given the intransigence the U.S. has displayed in the past regarding control of TLDs, this move isn't all that surprising. It is somewhat surprising, however, that China has chosen .com and .net as two of their TLDs, virtually guaranteeing operability problems with the rest of the Internet. While this manufactured difficulty is obviously by design, the motive remains unclear. Do the Chinese wish to:

• create their own internet, by design incompatible with the rest of the world,
  
• cause as much trouble as possible for the 'other' internet, or
  
• a combination of the two?

One thing is for sure...network administrators will have an interesting time trying to reconcile the conflicting TLDs .com and .net. Perhaps the fact that the Chinese TLDs are in the Chinese character set can be used to some effect, but I'm not certain.

Wha I am certain of is this: when I'm in charge, we'll have none of this 'multiple language' crap. Everyone will speak Esperanto [wikipedia.org], or else.

Very simple

The idea is user-friendliness and connectivity, but on the terms of the Chinese Communist Party

Chinese-encoded TLDs will make it easier for an increasingly-wired Chinese people to use the internet. It will also make it much easier for the Party to control exactly what happens on Chinese-language domains.

In an earlier age, Mao said that the Party must be in control of the gun. Now, the Party must be in control of the network. The effect is the same.

Re:Very simple: China is simply going to win...

Maybe I'm missing something... I thought I had a pretty firm grasp on how DNS works.

If China creates it's own ROOT servers, which contain forwarding information for the .{chinese-character-for-com} namespace, and another forwarder for .com (in english) namespace, aren't we talking about two distinct and seperate namespaces?

How does this break anything? It doesn't as far as I'm concerned. Someone tell me different, and if I get a bunch of doublespeak, I'll just call Cricket. (I'm dead serious.)

Perhaps more importantly, if the Chinese decided to sever their connectivity to the outside world (and with the Great Firewall, they've had that ability all along), how does this hurt the rest of the world?

China is a manufacturer, and an exporter. Insulating themselves from the global buyers hurts them, not us. We'll just have to get our paper drink umbrellas (and other cheaply made consumable crap) from someplace else. Wal-mart will be harmed a little while they forge new relationships with Taiwan, the Phillipines, Korea, and Maylasia... Barely a blip on the radar.

Re:Very simple: China is simply going to win...

I think the point is that if China create their own DNS, they will filter other DNS requests at The Great Firewall. This will likely be outgoing only; I'm sure other countries will be able to query the Chinese system.

There is one huge advantage in this f

Re:Very simple: China is simply going to win...

"We'll just have to get our paper drink umbrellas (and other cheaply made consumable crap) from someplace else. Wal-mart will be harmed a little while they forge new relationships with Taiwan, the Philippines, Korea, and Malaysia..."

I'm afraid that your pa

Re:A long time coming...Not that problem

It is somewhat surprising, however, that China has chosen .com and .net as two of their TLDs, virtually guaranteeing operability problems with the rest of the Internet.

Should not be a problem as long as their names include even one Chinese character, sin

This is old news...

China has already implemented this internet, and the url in the OP is hosted on it! That's why I'm getting access denied!

esperanto?!

Surely you mean lojban [wikipedia.org] right?

Re:An open source project should do this instead

You mean, why not have an Alternative DNS Root [wikipedia.org] or two?

Not only is there an alternative, there are several.

Is it going to be mandatory?

Because why would any Chinese citizen use that over the actual internet?

-Jesse

Re:Is it going to be mandatory?

"Because why would any Chinese citizen use that over the actual internet?"

You assume they will have a choice?

Of course not

All root systems are totally optional. You don't need to use DNS at all to use the Internet, and if you do use DNS, you are free to use your own that is tied to no roots and assign domains to IPs as you see fit. The ICANN roots are simply the defacto stand

Re:Of course not

You don't need to use DNS at all to use the Internet, and if you do use DNS, you are free to use your own that is tied to no roots and assign domains to IPs as you see fit.

And in other news, The Chinese government has banned the use of foriegn root servers

There you have it, US

This most likely wouldn't have happened if the current Bush administration cooperates internationally. Thanks a bunch!

Re:There you have it, US

What? No... that doesn't make sense at all. What does Bush have anything to do with this? He's a dummy, no doubt, but seriously... What are you basing that conclusion on? Besides, having china off the internet just means less spam / viruses / crap for me.

Why the fuck is this a 'troll'?

Are you people in denial? The Chinese are not particularly nice people, but their manufacturing economy would run a lot smoother over an interoperable Internet. Given the choice of maintaining the Great Firewall of China vs. maintaining their own damn In

it makes sense...

Controlling the backbones will make the "internet" a lot easier for them to censor.

Re:it makes sense...

but its not a "backbone".. china already controls their network backbones. this is entirely different, they are root domain servers... i know im being picky, but still, come on.

The end?

I doubt it. The current system is too embedded in China to be totally replaced by their own DNS system.

Re:The end?

I doubt it. The current system is too embedded in China to be totally replaced by their own DNS system.

Not at all; China has one of the largest industrial bases on the planet. It would not surprise me if they could completely strip down and rework their

Or....

"As one commentator notes, could be the beginning of the end of the globally interoperable Internet".

Or it could mean the rest of the world will continue to be interoperable while China becomes even more isolated.

I guess

I guess google's bending over backwards to censor the web searching just wasnt good enough, maybe some of the citizens figured out how to use lycos. Nothing they can do about that but recreate the internet in thier own immage. But without porn...will it

Re:I guess

But without porn...will it really be the internet?

I take it that you are not in to Chinese porn.

"Going global"

You know, the US used to be a lot more isolationist. We tend to see ourselves as superior, which limits our incentive to reach out to other countries. So we have people inside and outside of the US pressuring Americans go "go global." Given the commerce

sigh

I can't help but view this as the fault of the US. Think about it. ICANN, a US organisation, has done little to cater to the wishes of China, even though they're a large (and growing) presence on the internet. I may not agree with some of the views of the Chinese government, but if they want Chinese TLDs, they should have them.

ICANN needs to get off their high horse immediately.

Re:sigh

I can't help but view this as the fault of the US. Think about it. ICANN, a US organisation, has done little to cater to the wishes of China, even though they're a large (and growing) presence on the internet.

China's wishes are irrelevant. Like most countr

Re:sigh

I can't help but view this as the fault of the US. Think about it.

Not at all. China wants full and complete control of the internet and how it gives information to it's users. If ICANN had made chinese-character-encoded TLDs available, the Chinese government would have chosen a different method of control.

Make no mistake - this is an isolationary tactic, taking back control of what I'm sure the Chinese government sees as rightfully theirs. If ICANN does not exist in China and is not beholden to Chinese authority, then China does not have enough control and will shun ICANN, no matter how "cooperative" they may be.

Re:Imperialism

There is no technological reason
Chinese (and other languages) cannot be used in URLs, including TLDs. Unfortuantely, ICANN doesn't really see offering the internet to non-Latin character set languages as important. ICANN only gave China, .cn. The US on

Re:sigh

I can't help but view this as the fault of the US

LOL. You're funny.

It's pretty clear the Chinese government wants its own "internet" which it can control and which it can keep separate from the rest of the world. It's a control freaks' power trip.

I may no

I feel a great disturbance in the force...

As if millions of MMORPG gold farmers cried out in terror, and were suddenly silences...

Bad for China's economy

This move puts Chinese companies at a competitive disadvantage -- how can they connect to foreign suppliers, distributors, and customers? Will western companies continue to outsource to China if the country puts up too many obstacles to free communication?

Re:Bad for China's economy

Will western companies continue to outsource to China if the country puts up too many obstacles to free communication?
Not if it changes the economic to a great degree. Not only that but what if I can't find your company in the first place, let us say t

Re:Bad for China's economy-western-centric view

...how can they connect to foreign suppliers, distributors, and customers?

You should be asking the question the other way around:

How can foreign suppliers, distributors, and customers connect to them?

Clearly, China has made a calculated decision that these parties need China more than China needs them, and that steps will be taken to accommodate the problem...

So Long...

And thanks for all the fish!

no more spam?

This could be great, if china closes itself off from the rest of the net, my firewalls will give an audible sigh of relief. Now only if eastern europe would follow suit.

So ...

... after reading all of this, does this mean that China is starting its own root, isolated from the rest of the world, or is it starting a roo that can understand chinese characters?

I'm thinking the latter, though I'm at work and don't really care either

How, exactly?

One artcle is slashdotted, and the other two are short on technical details. So, I'm wondering, how are they going to make people go to the governments name servers? Will using your own cache hints file beecome a hanging offense? Will they stop routing

Biggest. Fork. Ever!

end transmission.

DNS != Internet, and DNS hierarchy

This doesn't end the globally interoperable Internet - as long as IP packets go end-to-end, it's still just fine. Depending on exactly how they've implemented this, it may be cleanly interoperable with the rest of DNS (except that the Global Roots have to get around to including China's extra CC_TLDs), or it may be interoperable for anybody using a compatible Chinese character-set handler client (which shouldn't be a big problem, since the reason for Chinese-Character CCTLDs is to include Chinese-character content). On the other hand, it could be implemented in a way that horribly breaks any 7-bit-ASCII DNS client. It shouldn't do that - DNS is hierarchical, so the worst it should do is botch lookups to the section because the DNS server's responding in Unicode and the client doesn't understand them.

The ICANN sky is falling!

...as one commentator notes, could be the beginning of the end of the globally interoperable Internet.

I'd be happy to read Michael Geist's comments if his server wasn't slashdotted. Based on the article summary (as well all know are always 100% accurate)

Issue of Control

If China wanted to control what their citizens could see and do on the Internet they could 1) set up their own DNS, and 2) Prohibit DNS traffic from leaving or entering the country. While technically savvy folks could navigate by solely IP or make partnerships with someone outside of China to get DNS information over non-standard ports, restricting use of DNS would be a highly effective control.

Screw you guys

I'm going to go build my own internet! With blackjack! And hookers!

In fact, forget the internet!

Did anyone actually read the first link?

I read both links, and I have to say that it's very cryptic. I think something got lost in the translation, but here is what *I* think they were saying...

They are creating new TLDs to supplement .com and .net. The new TLDs will be composed of Chinese characters, so instead of blah.com, you'll have blah.[X][X] where [X] represents a Chinese character. If this is all that they are doing--creating new non-ASCII TLDs--then there wouldn't be much in the way of conflict with the existing .com and .net structure.

But as I said, the language is confusing at best and I'm not sure if this is what they are really intending.

Re:About time for the wake-up call!!!

Except for a typo, that was a very effective, one might say valid, bit of international communication.
Oh, wait. Maybe you meant "not the only valid means." Still, I wouldn't say that you are illiterate for such a slip. And I'll take your word on your

And

Most of those languages are slowly but surely losing the diacritical marks.

See many circumflexes lately? They're being deprecated from French sloly but surely. Other accents will follow

Re:About time for the wake-up call!!!

It's about-time that the anglo-saxons wake-up to the fact that their crippled alphabet is not a valid means of international communication!

Other languages have different characters and or accents on them, and it's always a piss-off to be forced to use a

Re:About time for the wake-up call!!!

He was talking about the accents and punctuation characterised by languages like Spanish, French, German, Italian and so on. The punctuation marks are there as guides to pronuncation and meaning, and actually help clarify the use of language.

Re:Figures...

We already have, well sort of: http://european.nl.orsn.net/ [orsn.net]

Annoying implementation

(Summary of the English Version from original article.) [people.com.cn]

Creating their own Chinese-character TLDs for .cn and creating Chinese-character version of .mil.cn are fine, and creating Chinese-character versions of .com.cn etc. would be fine. Creating a Chinese

Re:manual DNS

Maybe you should ask yourself how many American people have set a different DNS server, or have installed an alternative application for a common task (say, a webbrowser, a wordprocessor) against "the mainstream".

Sure, some geeks may do this. But (certain