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Re: Multinational Internet or Balkanization?
2006-03-04 17:44:41
At 17:57 04/03/2006, Kjetil Torgrim Homme wrote:
On Fri, 2006-03-03 at 13:00 +0100, JFC (Jefsey) Morfin wrote:
> At 07:32 03/03/2006, Martin Duerst wrote:
> >You mix up technology and policy. Technology-wise, the Chinese are not
> >doing anything else than anybody else (read IDNA/Punycode,...),
> >plus probably some 8-bit stuff based on GB2312 and maybe even UTF-8
> >for backwards compatibility with earlier experiments.
>
> Dear Martin,
> It would be no use to tell you that you confuse many things. I would
> only suggest you to test and understand rather than guessing. The
> Chinese set-up is very simple. But it belongs to a standard (every
> other global network system) culture which is not (yet?) the IETF culture.
well, what Martin writes makes sense to me. I'm afraid I have no idea
what you are trying to say, however.
Dear Kjetil,
this is the core of the problem. I may use an imperfect Franglish
which does not help. But I have two kinds of readers (through their
responses).
- those who do not understand: mostly IETF, ICANN. They use to say:
"I think, it seems, etc." and quote RFCs and ICANN documents.
- those who do, support and use. They mostly test, implement, ask for
information, confirm, and use.
The problem is simple. There is a new internet under way. It has been
created by the US decision to control the internationalised ASCII
legacy internet. This leads other languages, nations, communities,
corporations, etc. to consider copying the USA. China experiments it
at the level of the largest linguistic disapora. I experiemented it
three times, two at the international network level with its
precedant other technologies and one through a internet technology test-bed.
This new internet is not a new technology (at least for the time
being). It is a new way to use the existing technology to
compartimentalise its operations. This is a phenomena I am used to
name "externets". It is not a new standard, it is a configuration,
like intranets, extranets, VPN, NATs, etc. It is certainly a basic
component of the Multilingual Internet.
> >(Speaking in Phillip's terms, the IETF has already defined how
> >to add a 'j' key to a telephone, and most telephones already
> >have one, or an equivalent.)
>
> I do not understand what Phillips means?
a complex number has a real and an imaginary part, and the imaginary
part is denoted with a "j" (well, engineers use "j", mathematicians tend
to use "i"). Phillip noted that MIT could use complex telephone numbers
for internal use without impacting worldwide telephone routing, since
they'd use an orthogonal name space.
OK. I use "i". I never thought Philips considered "complex numbers"
because it would means he has absolutely not understood the set-up.
And, if one was able to pick it immediately I thought he would be that one!
China is an example of externet. Its importance is that it works for
three years and no one noticed. More: no one wanted to believe it
existed. This proves that the Internet did _not_ suffer from it. The
result is that the test is succesfull and many will now copy it.
The problem is that from my experiments and analysis, there is no
problem in having two major externets. But there are problems in
having three and more.
These problems can be easily solved. However solutions are technical
but also ethical, societal, ecomical, political. I see two main options:
1. either the IETF understands, accepts and works (very fast)
together with all the concerned parties:
1.A either to stay the technical leader of the Internet technology
1.B or to document interoperability for the Internationalised
Legacy - broadly the ICANN space.
2. or the IETF does not want to reconsider RFC 3935 and its mission
of global influence on those who design, use and manage the Internet.
We have an increasing interoperability problem as new sources of
solutions develop to support another vision of the digital ecosystem
communications, than the one defined by RFC 3935.
I am disapointed as I think the option 2 is likely to happen. But, as
an IETF deliverables user I will continue to press for 1. From
experience I think the most resonable option for a most efficient
IETF would be option "1.B". But I am ready to contribute to any
option "1.A" effort.
> ICANN did their job. Their IDN list is Two years old. They had an IDN
> committee in parallel of the WG-IDNA. The list has 2 mails. The
> committee was lost. We discussed that extensively at the WG-IDNA. The
> documentation is as confuse as unworkable. Phillip's corporation had
> invested a lot of money, time and efforts in this. They had the
> customer base, signed a significant number of registrants, and toured
> the world to explain and motivate Registrars, ISPs and ccTLDs. They
> were not alone. They only met scepticism, distinterest and lack of
> registrant renewal.
I don't know the history, but the recent reports
http://icann.org/topics/gnso-initial-rpt-new-gtlds-19feb06.pdf
and
http://www.icann.org/general/idn-guidelines-22feb06.htm
seem promising to me.
Did you use IDN yourself?
there is wide consensus that new gTLD should be
added, and allowing IDNA labels as gTLD will force its way through.
adding xn--fiqs8s, xn--55qx5d and xn--io0a7i to the root servers may not
happen tomorrow, but I'm sure the process will take us there in
reasonable time.
a wide consensus which apparently does not include a 1/3 rd of the
internet users and fully satisfies probably only 10% of them?
You refer to "root server"s: I am not sure how you would want to
document them if you were to describe the real top zone organisation
now. Please recall Vint Cerf's defintion of the authoritative root:
the one with the largest number of users. GSMA was already a problem.
The no-alternative root Chines space does not seem to use a root and
soon to be the largest space in terms of users.
but this is an ICANN issue, and not related to the
protocols at all. the protocols have all the support we need to
implement whatever policy is decided.
Chinese are extremely precise. They speak of experimentation. I
talked of experimentation about my own test-bed. ICANN talked of
experimentation in ICP-3. All these experimentations have to
materialise in a consensus and in an architecture. It can be
documented by the IETF; IETF can document the interoperability of its
solutions; or IETF can disregard it and keeps maintaining what will
still be used. As I said, most probably with a increasing
interoperability problem. RFC 3066 Bis is the prototype of these kind
of problems.
> The problem is in the RFC. Nowhere else.
which RFC?
All of them. They share in a consistent vision. This vision is
outdating. RFC 3935 is probably a good example: it would be the
first document for PESCI to update. RFC 3066 Bis is another one: it
is purely local to the Internationalised US (industry) ASCII externet.
Please note, I said outdating, not outdated. IETF is such a pool of
competence and of experience it would be fool not to try to keep it
in the lead, or at least in the top loop.
jfc
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