China Launching Alternate Root Domain Name System

Begins Today

[rogerd]

Apparently, it begins today:
China to compete in dot-com domains [theglobeandmail.com].

"China's Ministry of Information Industry plans to add three top-level domain names: dot-net, and dot-com and dot-net.

The move puts the Ministry of Information Industry in competition with ICANN for the dot-com domain, although China will use a different character set."

[rogerd]

The chatter on this seems mixed right now - either the Internet as we know it is coming to an end, or that this is old news and the Chinese have had the dot-com in place for years.

[mrwhy2k]

Nothing wrong with a little competition. Capitalism at its finest.
Let the better service win out.

[carguy84]

"dot-net, and dot-com and dot-net"

is it me, or are 2 of those the same?

[whoisgregg]

Where do we register these new domain names? :)

[bcolflesh]

Should be interesting - I have to see if they will register <snip> for me.

[edited by: engine at 5:09 pm (utc) on Mar. 1, 2006]
[edit reason] specifics ;) [/edit]

[tschild]

It seems this has been garbled in news reports - see [circleid.com...]

[bill]

All the fun stuff happens while I'm asleep. ;)

I've owned a bunch of these alternate domain names for a while now. These are not romanized domain names at all. They are the Chinese language equivalent of .com, .net, & .org and were established by China as an alternative for the International Domain Name (IDN) proposed and implemented by the West. The Chinese were rightfully upset by the lackluster handling this solution was given in the outside world so they made their own.

Like one of the linked articles says, these domains are really just third level variations of the .cn domain. For example my Chinese language .com domain also resolves at .com.cn.

[blaze]

Yeah, is this .com.cn or .com?

If .com, boy that'd be funny but clearly insane.

I guess I can see it happening though, if you're in china, that you start resolving towards .com.cn if you type in .com with a special character set. This will cause some pain for global chinese types, but might not be that big of a deal for local types that are really just interested in chinese websites anyways.

This could cause a mess of confusion. I guess it's how the chinese are trying to break the network effect that icann has by introducing this confusion and leveraging the .com / .net / .org brand.

It's not like anyone can sue them for trademark infringement.

[bill]

This is all within the .cn domain, so there will be no confusion....and there hasn't been any confusion for the past 3 years that I've been using these names.

[blaze]

Ahh, so you're saying nothing has changed then.

How do you get to webmasterworld.com in China? Do you have to type webmasterworld.com.us?

What about a link to webmasterworld.com? Is it just a romanized set of characters?

I guess nations could start enacting a law that forces ISPs to use a root server which resolved .com to .com.localcountry, but boyo, that'd mess up the internet pretty bad.

Or are you saying that this article is so superbly out to lunch and it's not even .com it's like .<kanji for com? company?> resolves to .com.cn ...?

[bill]

superbly out to lunch
I think that gets my vote. ;)

It's more like this:

example.com.cn

also resolves to

example.Chinese characters for com

The system works somewhat like the old RealNames technology did. You need a browser plug-in or certain server software in place. Another example would be the new.net extensions. The Chinese technology works along the same lines.

These are names that resolve within the namespace controlled by CNNIC. The bloggers got it all wrong in this case. This really isn't news. It's a misunderstanding.

[Ipwalk]

Here's a blog that explains how this works technically:
[lightbluetouchpaper.org ]

Basically, it doesn't seem too bad. They just went ahead and made their own TLDs with Chinese characters, unless I'm misunderstanding something.

[charlier]

So I guess when a westener wants to refer to the chinese .com they will call it 'chicom' :)

[nomatter]

I agree with bill. It's a old news. As I'm chinese, I never use this and I also don't want to try this.
Additionally you have to install a plug-in. (Although MS said its IE 7.0 will support this.) As you know, to key in chinese character is something more difficult than type in letters.

[redstorm]

I never treat it as News. Ha ha ha, i want to keep up with the rest of the world.

[bill]

CNNIC released a statement about this issue back on March 3, but I didn't have time to post it until now.

• Statement on the Inaccurate Report on the Domain Name System in China [cnnic.net.cn]

Recently,it was reported that China had created its own Top Level Domains, and might be planning to break away from ICANN and the DNS. China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) as the registry of .CN ccTLD, made solemn and just declaration.

Where as, the corresponding reporter lacks the understanding of the real situation, the content of the report is severely inconsistent with the facts...