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.
Very simple (Score:4, Insightful)
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... (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.
Re:Very simple: China is simply going to win... (Score:3, Insightful)
There is one huge advantage in this for them; The Great Firewall turns from being a blacklist to a whitelist. Instead of blocking sites based on reports or automatic scanning of content, allowed sites would have to be enabled on the Chinese DNS system. Their DNS would know to delegate to the
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, w
Re:A long time coming...Not that problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Should not be a problem as long as their names include even one Chinese character, since I'm not aware that ICANN is even capable of assigning such names otherwise. At least I have yet to hear about any such names.
Strikes me that what they're trying to do is even further cut themselves off from undesired Western influences. They may wel
This is old news... (Score:2)
esperanto?! (Score:2)
Re:A long time coming... (Score:2)
Hmm... you seem to have made some spelling errors...
Given the attitude that the Chinese government has displayed in the past regarding control of information flows (see the Great Firewall), this move isn't all that surpri
Re:A long time coming... (Score:2)
Re:An open source project should do this instead (Score:2)
Not only is there an alternative, there are several.
Re:An open source project should do this instead (Score:2)
Re:An open source project should do this instead (Score:2)
How much do you think it costs to run DNS?
Next, DNS does push control down -- for everything but the TLD. DNS *is* generally run on open source, and *is* open source. In that anyone can add to the DNS hierarchy.
http://people.csa.iisc.ernet.in/gaurav/np/rfcs/dns
should give you a basic idea of what DNS is.
There are already root servers that serve alternate TLDs. Have been for years. Indeed, a lot of us do this privately. As an example, a lot of us use "made-up" TLDs for our LAN, and then k
Re:A long time coming... (Score:2)
They've had .com.cn and .net.cn for many years already. (Eg, the People's Daily link in the summary is at people.com.cn.)
Is it going to be mandatory? (Score:2)
Because why would any Chinese citizen use that over the actual internet?
-JesseRe:Is it going to be mandatory? (Score:2)
You assume they will have a choice?
Of course not (Score:3, Insightful)
This is all much ado about nothing, as it always has been with these DNS
Re:Of course not (Score:3, Insightful)
And in other news, The Chinese government has banned the use of foriegn root servers. Violators may be enrolled in the the state "Organ Donor" farm program.
Re:Of course not (Score:2)
You also don't need to use your own ISP's DNS server. Although it will tend to respond the quickest, you can use just about any DNS server in the world instead.
For that matter, most people should have at least their secondary DNS set to something outside their own ISP. For some reason, ISPs just love setting both the primary and secondary announced via DHCP to different addresses on th
Re:Is it going to be mandatory? (Score:2)
Buying, selling, porn, warez; no problem. Politics is what they want to block.
Re:Is it going to be mandatory? (Score:2)
If chinese people interact with outsiders on the internet, the Chinese government loses control. Blocking them from doing so in
There you have it, US (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There you have it, US (Score:2)
Re:There you have it, US (Score:2)
It won't have the slightest effect on that. Anyway, I live in Hong Kong and 95% of my spam is from the USA.
Re:There you have it, US (Score:2)
And that is way more important to the Chinese internet policy than Bush.
As for Bush, he sets foreign policy in general. He may be unpopular, but he lets Wal*Mart buy billions of dollars in Chinese goods.
So under Bush, the Chinese are making huge amounts of money by selling us goods, getting US Internet firewall technology (from Cisco and others), getting a censored version of the world's largest search engine and logistical hel
Why the fuck is this a 'troll'? (Score:2)
Re:Why the fuck is this a 'troll'? (Score:2)
Um, dude, I know the whole "America sucks" thing is trendy and all, and you would HATE to be a bad sheep and be left off the bandwagon, but how many Chinese have you actually talked to? I had a lot of contact with them before I graduated, and they are much bigger sheep than Americans are. My roommate CONSTANTLY tried to goad me into an argument about Taiwan, my somewhat girlfriend liked to spew the party line like ther
If there were national internets... (Score:2)
Re:There you have it, US (Score:2)
As a young child I escaped a government that believed in a whole laundry list of oppression. If one government came into being and fell into corruption (as every other government has done eventually) there would be no escape, just a nightmare of a Big Brother too big to ever overthrow.
it makes sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:it makes sense... (Score:2)
The end? (Score:2)
Re:The end? (Score:2)
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 entire Internet structure in as little as 2-3 years. Remember, the government mandates things; despite reforms, the Communist government is still in control and can "recommend" the use of their Internet over the larger one. And for anyone wishing to object
Or.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Or it could mean the rest of the world will continue to be interoperable while China becomes even more isolated.
Censorship? (Score:2)
Re:Or.... (Score:2)
Re:Not bloody likely (Score:2)
I would expect that my domain registrar will have arrangements with any decent sized root and register my company with any system that matters. If that means that they have to register once, twice, or eve
I guess (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I guess (Score:3, Funny)
I take it that you are not in to Chinese porn.
"Going global" (Score:2)
And then they turn around and start closing themselves off from the rest of the world.
Re:"Going global" (Score:2)
In the early 20th centrury, though, before the world wars, we were quite a bit more isolationist. We didn't get involved in world affairs. We had "enough" people. Etc.
sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
ICANN needs to get off their high horse immediately.
Re:sigh (Score:2, Insightful)
China's wishes are irrelevant. Like most countries, ICANN gave control of
I may not agree with some of the views of the Chinese government, but if they want Chinese
Re:sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (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 fract
Re:sigh (Score:3, Informative)
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 not agree with some of the views of the Chinese government, but if they want Chinese TLDs, they should have them.
What do you think the
Re:sigh (Score:2)
I feel a great disturbance in the force... (Score:5, Funny)
MMORPG gold farming is good for China (Score:2)
Bad for China's economy (Score:5, Insightful)
not sure (Score:2)
Now the question everybody will have to ask himself is "Can I afford to be isolated from China?" Since China has become the world's factory, I doubt many people will stop doing business with them. So everybody will basically support a dual system.
And if, at some point, people are forced to chose just one system because the two can't co
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...
Re:Bad for China's economy (Score:2)
Of course they will. There is too much money to be made in China and western companies will just buy a new domain name on the Chinese root system and make it link to their websites...
Re:Bad for China's economy-western-centric view (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
Com'on, it's not that hard ... think phones (Score:2)
So Long... (Score:2)
no more spam? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:no more spam? (Score:2, Funny)
So ... (Score:2)
I'm thinking the latter, though I'm at work and don't really care either way.
How, exactly? (Score:2)
When (not if) the Chinese government starts using their name servers as part of their censorship operations, a zillion "alternative" name servers will spring up behind the Great Firewall of China. A zillion distributed names se
Biggest. Fork. Ever! (Score:2)
DNS != Internet, and DNS hierarchy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:DNS != Internet, and DNS hierarchy (Score:2)
Most people don't type in IP addresses to get where they're going on the Interweb. I'm not sure most people type in URLs at all... except for maybe www.google.com now and then.
This will be a mess to resolve, half measures or no.
Cool (Score:2)
There are already RFCs for stuffing UTF-8 into DNS. Microsoft's own DNS server does it.
Re:DNS != Internet, and DNS hierarchy (Score:2)
The ICANN sky is falling! (Score:2)
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) I have to call this a load of crap.
If both networks are still using IPv4 then there is no end to the global internet, only the global domain system. I know, I know. For most, domain names *are* the internet. But all I have to do is throw my DNS requests
Issue of Control (Score:3, Insightful)
IP addresses (Score:2)
Messy but workable... (Score:2)
1) The two domain registrars can sync with mirror eachother's databases. Then the only glitches occur when the China and the U.S. have an active disagreement: they both want to register the same name to different parties, or China (most likely) wants to suppress from its people a DNS entry maintained by the U.S.
2) As long as IP#s and routers remain configured properly, you can always fall back on using IP#s rather than DNS names
Re:Messy but workable... (Score:2)
Of course, any "real" Chinese company will need to register BOTH foo.com and foo.(dot-com-character).cn -- just as today, businesses feel compelled to register foo.com, foo.org, foo.net, foo.biz, foo.ws, and so forth. But really, adding a few new TLDs wo
Google censors US video feeds (Score:2)
Or was Google's "censorship for the US" policy not covered on Slashdot in the last couple of days?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/27/google_ce
Was this mentioned on Slashdot recently?
Yes, you missed a great many things (Score:2)
This was a decision on the part of the submitter (aka 'creative control', probably a novelty around these parts) and not on the part of Google. Bitch at the submitter, if you have to bitch at som
Screw you guys (Score:5, Funny)
In fact, forget the internet!
Money will make it all seamless again... (Score:2)
Steve
Won't affect existing TLDs! (Score:2)
Annoying implementation (Score:3, Informative)
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-character version of .com is annoying, because it's in more direct conflict, and risks causing trouble to anybody with an internationalized DNS resolver.
Whoa... (Score:2)
I have to wonder how this will affect the Chinese people. Are they even being told that their internet is being replaced, at least in part? First story is slashdotted already...
When "counter-culture" types start seeing that all of their blogs and whatnot that speak against China suddely dissappear, will this invigorate their urge to spread democracy/free speech/what-have-you, or douse it? Will those previously ignorant (or who just didn't care) to th
What to call it? (Score:2)
The Chinternet.
China doesn't want to communicate? fine. (Score:2)
IntarDNS (Score:2)
I so hate it when people equate one of the many services runing on the internet with the Internet as such.
This article equates internet with DNS, which is as bad as equating internet and the web.
(Slightly in-topic) The internet will continue work just fine, the global DNS network OTOH might be slightly forked.
I guess "China to launch slightly different name resolution protocol" isn't a good headline.
Alternate lookups have failed but don't have to. (Score:2)
If this were to ever come about, I (and probably thousands of other administra
The sky is not falling. (Score:2)
What it means is having a limited number of gateways between the Chinese Internet and the rest of the world. Either that number will be zero or more than one. Any data exchange will doubtless be monitored and filtered to permit or deny whatever content they want to get in or come out.
I seriously doubt the number of gateways will be zero. They may try to do it with just one, if some foolish
This could be a good thing (Score:2)
What would be a problem was if china started handing out IP addresses that had been allocated elsewhere.
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:About time for the wake-up call!!! (Score:2)
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 hygiene.
And (Score:2)
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!!! (Score:2)
Other languages have different characters and or accents on them, and it's always a piss-off to be forced to use a characted subset to express yourself properly; when you leave out the accents, you look like an illiterate slob who does not know how to write correctly.
(Reposted, account modetarded as "overrated" by an ignorant redneck moderator).
Re:About time for the wake-up call!!! (Score:2)
Re:About time for the wake-up call!!! (Score:2)
The world says otherwise, as English is now the international language of trade and travel.
Re:About time for the wake-up call!!! (Score:2)
Re:About time for the wake-up call!!! (Score:2)
Re:About time for the wake-up call!!! (Score:2)
It's the rest of the world that is stupid for being proud of wasting their time learning multiple languages. So many countries have a language which only they speak, and then everyone has to learn one (or more!) other languages to talk to everyone else. What's the point? Adopt a global language (english, spanis
Re:About time for the wake-up call!!! (Score:2)
Re:Figures... (Score:2)
Re:Entertaining... how history repeats itself... (Score:2)
When did communism ever "work"?
Communism works in China
China is CINO (communist in name only). From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
In a dinner with Henry Kissinger, Deng joked with him that the pig being served (Kissinger is Jewish) was not really pig at all, but "Chinese Duck", so it was O.K. for him to eat it. So, too, Deng called his new system Socialism with Chinese characteristics so it wouldn't really be capitalism and would be O.K. for the PRC to adopt.
It was never meant to be anyth
Re:Entertaining... how history repeats itself... (Score:2)
Re:Entertaining... how history repeats itself... (Score:2)
I believe communism can work, but only if done democratically and in relatively small, homogeneous groups. American Indians implemented it quite well. The USSR didn't. When anything is forced upon people, they tend to get angry even if they agree with its aims.
Re:Entertaining... how history repeats itself... (Score:2)
According to the majority of the posts here it's a language issue.
Consider this: politics and how the chinese govermment works. They like control.
This new chinese internet is just that, a new control for their government to control the flow of information, keep the dissidents under their collective thumbs and to work the propreganda machine.
With these last few incidents with blogging and the lightning fast movement of the 'net in general, they have taken to isolate their people even further fr
Re:Worst. Idea. Ever. (Score:2)
Not for long... you will be cut off from rice as the frying pan has become a closed system, inoperable with your cooking system.
Re:manual DNS (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, some geeks may do this. But (certainly after some time) the vast majority of users just has the system configured "as it is supposed to be" (or as it comes by default).