China Prepares to Launch Alternate Internet 510
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... (Score:4, Interesting)
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
One thing is for sure...network administrators will have an interesting time trying to reconcile the conflicting TLDs
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.
Or.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Or it could mean the rest of the world will continue to be interoperable while China becomes even more isolated.
DNS != Internet, and DNS hierarchy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bad for China's economy (Score:3, Interesting)
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 that I search Google for custom manufacturing and I only find places in Japan, the US, and India, but not China. Big problem. The government in China must ride the Tiger, if they stop it will attack them...
Many stupid responses (Score:1, Interesting)
China is creating their own *root servers*. At a fundamental level, this affects name to IP address translation *only*. Furthermore, in order to do any communication with the rest of the world at all, China's network must remain interoperable with IPv4/v6. There is no technical limitation from anyone in China setting their root nameserver hints file to the normal root servers located around Asia-Pacific, Europe, or the Americas.
The second dingaling response I've seen is that "the US controls teh intarweb!" Please. Anyone that suggests this should go have the rest of their lobotomy completed. ICANN *only* controls which TLDs are available and nominally supports the root nameservers *for the Americas only*. There are technical alternatives avilable if ICANN ever gets too far out of line.
Re:A long time coming... (Score:2, Interesting)
In principle, there isn't anything wrong with countries controlling their own TLD's. Why not? Shouldn't they have control over them? Why should they be in the hands of a private organization under the thumb of the U.S. Congress? But when I consider the likely outcomes of doing this in practice, it starts to look a little different.
Right now anyone in the world can lay out $10 and own a domain name. Anyone anywhere in the world. What happens when, say, Yemen comes into control of
There are a number of countries where I don't think you'd ever notice a difference if control over their TLD's were passed to them. There are quite a few more where you would. How many places do you imagine the process of domain aquisition would be only open to people and businesses friendly to the ruling regime? Is that a desirable scenario? I ask because in a lot of places, it's a likely one; is that a worthwhile trade for getting your TLD's under the authority of someone besides ICANN?
Wouldn't it be great if you needed to be government licenced to own a domain name? How about if the pathway to domain ownership was strewn with requisite bribes, as government functions are in many countries? Honestly, it doesn't sound so hot to me, but it will be a new reality in a number of countries. I don't think there's even a question of it. Wouldn't people in Zimbabwe be happy to wind up paying $500 or more for what costs $10 today for the satisfaction of knowing that their name wasn't provided through the auspices of ICANN? Probably not. But at least the intransigent U.S. will have finally capitulated. Victory at last!
Providing yet another outlet for institutionalized corruption is the least problem, though. The bigger problem is that, while many countries have liberal societies where the free exchange of ideas is practically an unquestioned fact of life, there are even more where the free exchange of ideas is considered a menace by the government - China's just the biggest, nowhere near the only. Iran, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and France have also all taken an active interest in establishing a controlling stake in internet governance. These are all regimes known to kill information that they don't want public - you don't believe that they wouldn't welcome gleefully the opportunity to have direct control over their own TLD's, do you? You don't wonder for the span of a heartbeat why they would, right?
I maintain that uncontrolled information flow is your only hope of knowing the world beyond the reach of your own five senses. Trying to know reality by anything less than an uncontrolled flow makes you an extension of the biases of whoever controls your information. Internalize that; regimes like North Korea know it very well. TLD control provides a means of information control to people who'd very much like to control it, and I don't want them to. Uncontrollable information is the best thing to happen to the world in the last 50 years.
Oh, but it's ICANN! The horror.
And what, exactly, are the disadvantages of keeping the current arrangement? What might any given country improve by having control over their TLD? What has been detrimental about ICANN's oversignt? I've heard lots of peevish griping about TLD control, but I'm still waiting for a reasonable answer to one of these questions. Congress hasn't once used their authority to interfere with ICANN, and TLD's continue to be freely and cheaply available to everyone in
Re:Very simple: China is simply going to win... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Did anyone actually read the first link? (Score:4, Interesting)
They are creating new TLDs to supplement
But as I said, the language is confusing at best and I'm not sure if this is what they are really intending.
Re:Very simple: China is simply going to win... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm afraid that your paper drink umbrellas may cost twice as much because Taiwan and Philippines will double the prices because of the increased demand... I'm afraid that you will need to pay twice as much for your Nike shoes, ThinkPad, mobile phone, t-shirts, pants, slippers, watches... and I think that even your new car "made in USA" will be twice as expensive because all the technology (and other inputs) used for the car production costs twice as much... and... and... ("twice as much" is just exaggeration
Maybe it will end up that Americans will find out that it is cheaper to produce paper drink umbrellas (and other cheaply made consumable crap) in USA and you will have a chance to be employed (if yes, you will be the other lucky half that have a job in USA).
My advice is that you should maybe buy extra paper umbrellas ASAP and have a nice evening with your friends while discussing the "globalization" phenomena and interconnection of global economy where nobody can stay aside and simply watch while having paper drink umbrellas...
Believe me, I wish you the wealth for the rest of your life... because it will be a sign that the global economy is stable - for me and for you. The Black Thursday crash of the Exchange was reflected in Europe a years later... Believe me, you will personally feel any global instability or tension just in hours or days when it happens - this is the drawback of the communication speed...
Sure, this will (hopefully) never happen. Let's hope that this is a sci-fi. I didn't study the economy but I'm sure the opinion that there is always other "cheap labor" waiting to work for less money and that USA can stay safely aside by simply switching the trade routes from China to Malaysia, it is really... hmm, not wise.
I'm not fighting against USA or China; I simply think that we are on the same boat. If China goes down so the USA and Europe... But I'm sure, that this time it is not the case
Re:Imperialism (Score:3, Interesting)
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,
Another problem is that ICANN gave the majority of the IPV4 addresses to the US. Huge countries such as China were left with nearly nothing. When given only one TLD, allotted only a small fraction of the IP addresses that the US gets, and being forced to write URLs in a foreign language, it's only natural that China would design a more rational replacement.
Regardless of what language was used for ARPANET, there is no good reason not to support all major languages now.