[IP] more on Worth reading Wall Street Journal on fragmentation of the Internet
Begin forwarded message:
From: Fred Baker <fred@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: January 19, 2006 3:13:24 PM EST
To: Michael R Nelson <mrn@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: dave@xxxxxxxxxx, Thomas Narten <tnarten@xxxxxxxxxx>,
john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Brian Carpenter <bcar@xxxxxxxxxx>, David E
Martin <martinde@xxxxxxxxxx>, st.amour@xxxxxxxx, klensin@xxxxxxx,
shears@xxxxxxxx, vint@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Wall Street Journal on fragmentation of the Internet
This is indeed an important issue.
The writer clearly didn't understand the DNS, which he calls 'a so-
called domain-name system, also called the "root"'. That said, the
fact that China and the Arab world are deploying TLDs using their
character sets and ICANN is not enabling that is a statement about
ICANN. ICANN needs to wake up, bless the ones that exist, and make
sure that they are integrated with the rest of the TLDs. One might
think of the rogue non-ASCII TLDs as routing around a failure.
As to the balkanization of the net, it is in a certain sense
inescapable. I'd really like to be able to exchange mail with Chinese
or Arabic-speaking people who are using their favorite TLDs. There
are two problems, though: I am very unlikely to be able to say "I
want to send a note to Amr who works at آپضذغقع.آرابيص,
as I don't speak, read, or write Arabic and the squiggles don't mean
a thing to me. So I'm going to need either for Amr to have sent me an
email so I can capture the "internationalized" address for my own
use, or I'm going to need some kind of directory service that allows
me to locate Amr and determine his address. Also, lets hop that Amr
speaks English, as (again), I don't speak Arabic. The user
communities are already balkanized in that way, and are unlikely to
ever get unbalkanized - if we can't understand each other's
languages, we aren't going to communicate very effectively.
What would concern me more is balkanization at the network layer. If
Amr does speak English, it would be tragic if he couldn't send me an
email that was in my language.
I think the time has come for ICANN to start leading in the area of
non-ASCII TLDs; the rest of the world isn't waiting around for it,
and that is likely to make ICANN irrelevant on the topic if ICANN
lets it. But we shouldn't confuse language balkanization with network
balkanization.
On Jan 19, 2006, at 9:23 AM, Michael R Nelson wrote:
Since this is an important issue, I was glad to see this was
actually on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal.
(and not buried somewhere inside).
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++
Michael R. Nelson
Director, Internet Technology and Strategy
IBM Corporation
1301 K St., N.W., Suite 1200
Washington, DC 20005
202-515-5137
cell 703-598-5187
mrn@xxxxxxxxxx
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Endangered Domain
In Threat to Internet's Clout,
Some Are Starting Alternatives
Rise of Developing Nations,
Anti-U.S. Views Play Role;
Pioneer Sounds the Alarm
A 'Root' Grows in Germany
By CHRISTOPHER RHOADS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 19, 2006; Page A1
More than a decade after the Internet became available for
commercial use, other countries and organizations are erecting
rivals to it -- raising fears that global interconnectivity will be
diminished.
German computer engineers are building an alternative to the
Internet to make a political statement. A Dutch company has built
one to make money. China has created three suffixes in Chinese
characters substituting for .com and the like, resulting in Web
sites and email addresses inaccessible to users outside of China.
The 22-nation Arab League has begun a similar system using Arabic
suffixes.
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"The Internet is no longer the kind of thing where only six guys in
the world can build it," says Paul Vixie, 42 years old, a key
architect of the U.S.-supported Internet. "Now, you can write a
couple of checks and get one of your own." To bring attention to
the deepening fault lines, Mr. Vixie recently joined the German
group's effort.
Alternatives to the Internet have been around since its beginning
but none gained much traction. Developing nations such as China
didn't have the infrastructure or know-how to build their own
networks and users generally didn't see any benefit from leaving
the network that everyone else was on.
Now that is changing. As people come online in developing nations
that don't use Roman letters -- especially China with its 1.3
billion people -- alternatives can build critical mass. Unease with
the U.S. government's influence over a global resource, and in some
cases antipathy toward the Bush administration, also lie behind the
trend.
"You've had some breakaway factions over the years, but they've had
no relevance," says Rodney Joffe, the chairman of UltraDNS, a
Brisbane, Calif., company that provides Internet equipment and
services for companies. "But what's happened over the past year or
so is the beginning of the balkanization of the Internet."
The Internet, developed by U.S. government agencies beginning in
the 1960s, uses a so-called domain-name system, also called the
"root," that consists of 264 suffixes. These
include .com, .net, .org and country codes such as .jp for Japan.
The root is coordinated by a private, nonprofit group in Marina del
Rey, Calif., called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers or Icann. This body works under the auspices of the U.S.
Department of Commerce, which set up the organization in 1998.
Does the U.S. government have too much control over the way the
Internet is run?
Having a single root is central to the universality of the Internet
and critical to its power and appeal. Key servers that are part of
the root system determine whether the suffix of an Internet domain
name is on the official list. If so, the message is directed within
milliseconds to the administrator of each suffix for further
routing. In the case of .com, that administrator is Verisign Inc.
A single root helps ensure that when people type in a Web address
such as www.amazon.com, they all end up at the site of the Internet
retailer no matter where in the world they are or which Internet
service provider they use. All addresses must use one of the 264
domain names. Any changes must be approved by Icann and ultimately
by the Commerce Department. Alternative roots form the basis for
rivals to the Internet.
As the Internet's role grows around the world, some are uneasy with
the notion that a U.S.-based body overseen by the U.S. government
has sole power over what domain names are used and who controls
each name. Other countries such as China also say Icann is too slow
in forming domain names in non-Roman languages, hindering the
development of an Internet culture in those countries.
Concern about U.S. oversight increased last summer when the
Commerce Department persuaded Icann to postpone the approval of a
new domain-name suffix to be used for pornographic Web sites, .xxx.
The department said it had received letters of complaint from
Christian groups. While other countries also opposed the name,
critics cited the incident as evidence of Washington's influence.
The matter of control came to a head last November at a United
Nations summit in Tunis, where the U.S. delegation fought off
demands from more than 170 countries to give up unilateral
oversight of Icann.
More than half of the Internet's users today are outside the U.S.
Governments increasingly are interested in how the Internet works.
Brazil, for instance, collects much of its tax revenue online. "The
Internet has become a critical part of our lives," says Abdullah Al-
Darrab, Saudi Arabia's deputy governor for technical affairs.
"These policies should not be left to a single country or entity."
U.S. officials counter that the Internet is too valuable to tinker
with or place under an international body like the U.N. "What's at
risk is the bureaucratization of the Internet and innovation," says
Michael Gallagher, the Department of Commerce official who
administers the government's tie to Icann. Mr. Gallagher and other
backers of Icann also say that the countries loudest in demanding
more international input -- China, Libya, Syria, Cuba -- have
nondemocratic governments. Allowing these nations to have influence
over how the Internet works could hinder freedom of speech, they say.
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Others argue that a fragmented Internet is a natural result of its
global growth and shouldn't be terribly harmful. Governments
already control what their citizens see on the Internet by blocking
some sites, making surfing a less-than-universal experience, notes
Paul Mockapetris, who invented the Internet's domain-name system in
the early 1980s.
Icann's master database of domain names is preserved in 13
"mirrors" -- servers that automatically copy any changes made to
the original database. The duplication makes the system robust in
cases of attack or failure. Ten of the 13 mirrors are in the U.S.;
the others are in Amsterdam, Stockholm and Tokyo.
Operating the 'F Root'
A nonprofit organization headed by Mr. Vixie operates one mirror
called the "F root." Working without pay or contract from Icann, he
runs his mirror from the basement of an old telegraph office in a
brown stucco building with a red, Spanish-tiled roof in Palo Alto,
Calif.
Located between a Walgreen's drugstore and an art gallery, the F
root building looks unimpressive, but it plays a critical role in
the flow of Internet traffic. Powerful servers inside a locked,
metal cage translate Internet domain names into a series of
numbers, called Internet protocol addresses, helping users find Web
sites and send and receive email. Mr. Vixie's center handles about
4,000 queries a second from several continents.
Mr. Vixie, a high-school dropout, was a precocious programmer,
helping while still in his mid-20s write the domain-name software
now used on most servers. He now runs a company that services the
software. He helped build the F root in 1994 when he was 30 and
helped foil an attack by hackers in 2002 that hampered all the
mirrors except his and one other. Later he came up with a way to
bolster the system by replicating the function of the 13 mirrors at
other servers.
Now Mr. Vixie is turning his attention to what he feels is an even
greater threat to how the Internet works: fragmentation.
Last June, Mr. Vixie emailed Markus Grundmann, a 35-year-old
security technician in Hannover, Germany. Mr. Vixie was seeking
information about the Open Root Server Network, or ORSN, which Mr.
Grundmann founded.
Mr. Grundmann at first thought the email was fake. He was surprised
that a pillar of the U.S.-led system would want anything to do with
him. He explained to Mr. Vixie that he set up ORSN in February 2002
because of his distrust of the Bush administration and its foreign
policy. Mr. Grundmann fears that Washington could easily "turn off"
the domain name of a country it wanted to attack, crippling the
Internet communications of that country's military and government.
Mr. Vixie says he has no interest in making political statements
but he agreed last September to work with Mr. Grundmann by
operating one of ORSN's 13 mirrors. Mr. Vixie has also placed a
link to the once-obscure German group on his personal Web site.
The moves roiled the Internet community of programmers and techies
of which he is a prominent member. Vinton Cerf, one of the founders
of the Internet, says he asked Mr. Vixie on the phone, "What were
you thinking?" Says Mr. Cerf: "I don't think it's helpful to give
visibility to a group that is fragmenting the Internet."
Mr. Vixie says he sees the European effort as a check of sorts on
the Icann system. The U.S.-backed group will be more likely to act
in the global interest if it knows that users have an alternative,
he says.
Twelve other computer scientists -- mostly in Germany, Austria and
Switzerland -- have agreed to help run the new root. Close to 50
Internet service providers in a half-dozen European countries now
use ORSN.
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For the moment, that is merely a symbolic step. The domain names in
ORSN's directory are identical to those in Icann's. Users of ORSN
get routed in the same direction as they would have if they were in
the Icann system and can communicate with the same Web sites. ORSN
doesn't create or sell its own domain names. If it did, Mr. Vixie
says he would quit immediately. But if ORSN disagrees with a move
taken by Icann, it could refuse to follow suit.
"The Internet is a child of the U.S. government," says Mr.
Grundmann. "But now the child has grown up and can't stay at home
forever."
Choosing a Suffix
A company called UnifiedRoot, based in Amsterdam, has taken things
a step further than ORSN. In late November, the company began
offering customers the right to register any suffix of their
choosing, such as replacing .com with the name of their company.
The price is $1,000 to register and an additional $250 each year
thereafter.
The company has established its own root and signed up Amsterdam's
Schiphol Airport, among other companies, according to Erik
Seeboldt, UnifiedRoot's managing director. These companies can use
their own brand name as a domain name to create addresses such as
arrivals.schiphol, he says. Users of UnifiedRoot can also access
all sites using Icann-approved domain names such as .com, but Icann
users couldn't go to a .schiphol address, he says.
"We want to bring freedom and innovation back to the Internet,"
says Mr. Seeboldt. The Internet service provider Tiscali SpA, which
has five million subscribers in Europe, and some of Turkey's
largest service providers use UnifiedRoot's naming system.
Some countries with non-Roman alphabets are also taking matters
into their own hands. China has created three domain names in
Chinese characters -- .zhongguo, .gongsi and .wangluo -- and made
them available for public and commercial use inside China only.
Similarly, Arab countries have in the past 18 months experimented
with country code domain names in Arabic, distinct from the Icann
system, says Khaled Fattal of Surrey, England. Mr. Fattal is head
of Minc.org, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the
Internet multilingual.
"There is no such thing as a global Internet today," says Mr.
Fattal. "You have only an English-language Internet that is
deployed internationally. How is that empowering millions of
Chinese or Arab citizens?"
Icann is responding to the criticism. At its last meeting in
December it took steps to enhance the role of foreign governments
in its decision making and accelerated the development of non-
English domain names.
Paul Twomey, the chief executive officer of Icann, says the
divisions reflect cultural differences between nations that operate
under a strong government hand and those, including the U.S., that
put more trust in the private sector. "We are more comfortable with
messy outcomes that work," says Mr. Twomey, who is Australian. "But
we need to integrate other values and languages into the Internet
and make sure that it still works as one Internet."
That's not enough for some. "We would like the process to speed
up," says Li Guanghao, the head of international affairs for the
China Internet Network Information Center, in an email interview.
The center allocates Internet-protocol addresses in China in
conjunction with the Icann system but is also developing the non-
Icann Chinese character suffixes.
Mr. Vixie says he joined ORSN to make clear his view that such
efforts will continue unless Icann becomes more inclusive. "I
realize that this could help unleash the hordes of hell," he says.
"But I hope it will make people wonder: 'What if there are more of
these?' "
Write to Christopher Rhoads at christopher.rhoads@xxxxxxx
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