Is China Preparing to Go its Own Way with its Own Internet Root?

[jose]

[i]Interesting things happening in China. An article in the English edition of the People’s Daily on line is headlined: Decimal network security address begins operation:

“China’s decimal network security address was officially launched. China has made a fundamental breakthrough in its Internet development; and actual use has been successful. The birth of decimal network technology makes China the only country able to unify domain names, IP addresses and MAC addresses into the text of a metric system; the second, after the United States (US), in the world to have root servers and IP address hardware connectivity servers and its own domain name, IP address and MAC address resources; and enables our country to become the world’s second country (after the US) to possess and control scarce network resources such as network distribution, domain names and addresses. It puts a crack in the US’s monopoly over the Internet, based on hexadecimal technology; and is a major, independent technical innovation of the Internet in China.” [/i]

[url]http://www.circleid.com/posts/813112_china_internet_root_ipv9/[/url]

[npcomplete]

Having a separate root is hardly a new thing. I was involved in the alternate root since 1996, and was on the board of the Top Level Domain Association, an organization of alternate root types. It was/is like herding cats. I ran tld servers in the alternate root with registry etc. I got thoroughly trashed by ICANN in 2000 over my alt root investments and operations, and of course my involvement with .web.

I still think that separate roots may happen (already happened). This should be interesting. I will pass the article onto some of my other alt-root friends.

Marc

[Giant]

Originally Posted by npcomplete

Having a separate root is hardly a new thing. I was involved in the alternate root since 1996, and was on the board of the Top Level Domain Association, an organization of alternate root types. It was/is like herding cats. I ran tld servers in the alternate root with registry etc. I got thoroughly trashed by ICANN in 2000 over my alt root investments and operations, and of course my involvement with .web.

I still think that separate roots may happen (already happened). This should be interesting. I will pass the article onto some of my other alt-root friends.

Marc

You're right Marc, this news is nothing new. A few guys in China think they have found a new idea for China but 99% of the engineers disagree. You need a plugin (list) to make this thing work, it's a dumb idea in today's internet. This is only a personal effort, NOT endorsed by the government.

[touchring]

Originally Posted by npcomplete

I was involved in the alternate root since 1996, and was on the board of the Top Level Domain Association, an organization of alternate root types.

interesting, is this related to ICANN? Got inside info on dname?

[Rubber Duck]

IDN are probably chasing this out of the woodwork. If this is a private enterprise then itts probably now or never.

[npcomplete]

Originally Posted by Giant

You're right Marc, this news is nothing new. A few guys in China think they have found a new idea for China but 99% of the engineers disagree. You need a plugin (list) to make this thing work, it's a dumb idea in today's internet. This is only a personal effort, NOT endorsed by the government.

plugins for client-side dns in the alt space have always been a dumb idea. The other (better) way to set up an alternate tld is to set up a properly configured root server system that resolves both the legacy system (.com, ccTLD's, etc) and the alternate tld's in question. There are *many* alternate root systems in operation today. I have run some version of the alt root on some of my own servers since 1996. With plugins it is a bit easier for the end-users since you don't need to explain how to point their pc's to alt root resolving dns servers. For people like the people around here that live and breathe this stuff, that is trivial. Most internet users have no clue what an ip is or a dns server is, so getting them to point their dns to an alt root dns is difficult to put it mildly.

As for root splits, I think it *might* happen on a larger scale someday. I will reserve judgment as to whether a root split is a good thing or a bad thing, just that it *might* happen based on political considerations. You can argue good and bad from a variety of angles. Among the existing root systems there are a number of "tld collisions" where two root system might claim (for example) ".xyz" that point to different tld servers and different customers at the second level. In the last year there has been progress in minimizing tld collisions, but this gets back to my "herding cats" comments.

In the same way that nuclear weapons are easy to build (in some sense), and therefore likely to be used (again) in major cities at some point, the same argument applies to root systems. The technology is trivial compared to nuclear weapons which explains the "proliferation of root systems" today. The negative impact is obvious since it reduces communication and cooperation among nations... which gets back to that nuclear thing I was talking about. Feel free to roll your own argument on when multiple roots might be useful.

Marc

[jacksonm]

Originally Posted by npcomplete

I got thoroughly trashed by ICANN in 2000 over my alt root investments and operations, and of course my involvement with .web.

Hi,
Could you please elaborate a bit more on this thrashing? Why did it happen and what did it entail?

.

Originally Posted by npcomplete

With plugins it is a bit easier for the end-users since you don't need to explain how to point their pc's to alt root resolving dns servers. For people like the people around here that live and breathe this stuff, that is trivial.

I think you may have given too much technical credit to the crowd at large. There are about 5 people in this board who understand the above in practice.

.

[npcomplete]

Originally Posted by jacksonm

Hi,
Could you please elaborate a bit more on this thrashing? Why did it happen and what did it entail?
...snip...

http://forum.icann.org/tldreport/3A0C6EAF0000005F.html

This is the thing that comes up when you google my name. This is small part of a much larger thread. Back in 2000 my investments were some of the most popular topics during the decisions by ICANN to open up new tld's. If you poke around that message board you can find all kinds of stuff about my investments.

Basically .web was offering registrations in the alternate root, so I registered a very large number of domains... ahem... basically the best domains imaginable. In retrospect this was not a smart move on my part, and a genuinely crappy job of flying below the radar. I have learned a lot (I hope) about that radar thing.

For me it was just another investment. Everybody else got pissed because it looked like I had cornered the market on quality. I quickly wrote it off and moved on, with my typical "win some lose some" attitude. For a lot of people it is more of a jealousy and envy thing - not one of the best emotions. I responded a few times on that board but I have a solid rule that I have enforced throughout my life: Don't argue with morons. If you win all you can say is that you beat up a moron in a battle of wits. If you lose, all you can say is that you lost an argument with a moron. And of course, most morons don't know if they have won or lost a battle of wits, so it just goes on and on and wastes my time... time better spent in other more profitable endeavors.

Marc

[jacksonm]

Originally Posted by npcomplete

I responded a few times on that board but I have a solid rule that I have enforced throughout my life: Don't argue with morons. If you win all you can say is that you beat up a moron in a battle of wits. If you lose, all you can say is that you lost an argument with a moron. And of course, most morons don't know if they have won or lost a battle of wits, so it just goes on and on and wastes my time... time better spent in other more profitable endeavors.

Amen. This is the most sound advice I've heard in a long time. Sadly, I take the bait all too often. I must try to improve in this area.

Thanks for that piece of wisdom.

.

[zorglub]

Originally Posted by npcomplete

As for root splits, I think it *might* happen on a larger scale someday. I will reserve judgment as to whether a root split is a good thing or a bad thing, just that it *might* happen based on political considerations

Totally agree with this and China would be in best position to do this with it's internal market. Maybe I don't understand well the article on CircleID and for sure I don't know China well, but if a Ministry of Information Industries is in charge of this... Doesn't it mean it will very likely happen ?

[dusty]

Originally Posted by Giant

You're right Marc, this news is nothing new. A few guys in China think they have found a new idea for China but 99% of the engineers disagree. You need a plugin (list) to make this thing work, it's a dumb idea in today's internet. This is only a personal effort, NOT endorsed by the government.

I think Giant has it right.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root

[Rubber Duck]

Yes, more hot air from planet Zogg. All is well in IDN land!