In Threat to Internet's Clout, Some Are Starting Alternatives
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.
"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.
Question of the Day: 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.
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.
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?'
互联网域名系统权威地位面临挑战
在互联网投入商业应用10多年之后，一些国家和组织正在著手建立与之竞争的系统，对此人们不禁担忧，有朝一日，全球网络间的相互联通性或许将不复存在。
德国电脑工程师出于政治立场考虑正在开发互联网的替代品。荷兰一家公司这样做则是为了营利目的。中国推出了三种汉字后缀以代替.com等后缀，这使中国之外的用户无法进入此类网站和电子信箱。拥有22个成员国的阿拉伯国家联盟(Arab League)也开始用阿拉伯语后缀推出了类似的系统。
以美国为基础建立的互联网其主要架构者保罗?维克西(Paul Vixie)说，互联网不再是只有少数人才能建立的东西。现在只要投入一点资金，任何人都能实现。为了引起人们对愈演愈烈的错误路线的关注，维克西最近加入了那个德国组织的活动。
互联网的替代品从一开始就有，但一直未成气候。中国等发展中国家没有建设自己网络的基础设施及技术能力，用户一般也感受不到离开现有的网络会获得什么好处。
但现在这种情况正在改变。随著不使用罗马字符的发展中国家上网人数越来越多──尤其是有13亿人口的中国──互联网替代品的影响力也变得不容小视。对美国政府垄断全球资源的不满──有时还有对布什政府的不满──也是导致这一趋势的原因之一。
UltraDNS的董事长罗德尼?约菲(Rodney Joffe)说，这些年来要另立门户的事时有发生，不过都没有什么结果。但过去一年来，互联网真正开始分崩离析了。UltraDNS主要为企业提供互联网设备和服务。
美国政府部门上世纪60年代开始开发的互联网使用所谓的域名系统，或称“根”，其下共有264个后缀。其中括.com、.net、.org还有国家代码，比如.jp代表日本。这个域名系统是由位于加州的一家叫做互联网名称与数字地址分配机构(The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)的私有非营利组织负责协调。该机构1998年成立，在美国商务部(Department of Commerce)资助下运作，并接受美国商务部的监督。
具有单一的一个域名系统是互联网世界的核心所在，这对其影响力和吸引力至关重要。作为域名系统组成部分的主服务器会对互联网域名的后缀进行解析，判断是否在正式清单中。如果结果是肯定的，这一信息就会迅速被传输至具体后缀的管理者，进行下一步处理。对.com而言，这个管理者是Verisign Inc.。
采用单一的域名系统有助于确保网址的唯一性，比如当人们键入“
www.amazon.com”时，无论他在地球的哪个角落、也无论他使用的是哪个网络运营商的服务，进入的都应该是网络零售商亚马逊公司(Amazon.com Inc.)的网站。所有的域名都必须使用这264个后缀中的一个，任何改动都必须征得ICANN的同意，并最终由美国商务部批准。而采用其他的域名系统为挑战互联网提供了基础。
随著互联网在全球各地的影响越来越大，让一些国家感到不快的一点是，域名的管理大权被一个美国政府监管下的机构所独揽，只有它才能决定什么样的域名可以使用以及由谁来控制某个域名等。中国等其他国家还抱怨说，在发展非罗马文域名方面，ICANN的进展过于缓慢，阻碍了使用非罗马文字国家网络文化的发展。
去年夏季，美国商务部说服ICANN推迟批准一个用于色情网站的域名后缀“.xxx”，称它收到了基督教团体发来的大量反对信件。这一举动使得外界更加担心美国对互联网的控制。虽然其他国家也反对采用这样的后缀，但批评人士以此作为华盛顿对互联网施加影响的一个例证。
互联网控制权之争在去年11月份激化到了顶点，当时联合国(United Nations)在突尼斯召开峰会，170多个国家都要求美国放弃对ICANN的独家监管，但遭到美国代表的拒绝。
如今，超过半数的互联网用户都分布在美国以外的其他地区。各国政府对于互联网的运作方式也越来越感兴趣。比如，巴西的税收大部分就是通过网络征收的。“互联网已经成为我们生活里的一个重要部分，”沙特阿拉伯负责技术事务的官员Abdullah Al-Darrab说，“这些监管工作不应由某个国家或某个机构独揽。”
美国官员则反驳称，互联网非常宝贵，不能随意处置，也不宜置于像联合国这样的国际机构控制之下。“那样有可能给互联网带来官僚主义负担，并扼杀其特有的创造性，”美国商务部官员、负责政府与ICANN联络的官员麦克尔?加拉查(Michael Gallagher)说。加拉查和其他支持ICANN的人士还表示，在要求扩大国际社会对ICANN影响的国家中，呼声最大的几个国家如中国、利比亚、叙利亚和古巴等都不是民主国家。他们说，让这些国家获得对互联网的控制权可能会有碍言论自由。
其他人则认为，互联网在向全球发展的过程中自然会发生分化，这应该不会有太大的坏处。上世纪80年代初发明了互联网域名系统的保罗?莫卡派乔斯(Paul Mockapetris)就指出，一些政府实际上已经控制了人们对互联网的浏览，采取的方式就是封锁某些网站，让上网冲浪不再那么无拘无束。
ICANN域名的主数据库保存在13个“镜像”上，即13个能自动复制原始数据库任何变动的服务器。这样的备份方式让整个系统在遭遇攻击或发生故障时依然坚固无比。这13个镜像中有10个在美国，另外3个分别放在了阿姆斯特丹、斯德哥尔摩和东京。
维克西领导的一个非营利组织负责其中一个名为“F根”的镜像。ICANN没有给他任何报酬，也没有与他签订任何的合同。他维护的这个镜像安置在加州帕洛阿尔托一幢棕色大楼里的一间旧电报房的地下室里。
“F根”所在的建筑位于一家Walgreen便利店和一家画廊之间，看起来很不起眼，不过它对于保证互联网通讯的畅通却至关重要。放置在一个带锁金属箱里的服务器功能强大，它能将互联网域名转换为被称作“互联网协定位址”的一连串数字，帮助用户查找网页和收发电子邮件。维克西的中心每秒要处理来自世界各地的约4,000条指令。
高中时辍学的维克西是位很有天赋的程序设计师，20多岁时他帮助开发了现在应用于大多数服务器上的域名软件。现在他经营一家软件服务公司。1994年，30岁的维克西协助建立了“F根”，2002年他参与了对一次几乎造成所有镜像瘫痪的黑客攻击进行的打击行动，当时只有他负责的“F根”和另一个镜像幸免。后来他想出了一个强化系统的方法，就是将13个镜像的数据备份到其他服务器上。
如今维克西将注意力转移到了他认为对互联网发展威胁更大的领域：这就是互联网的分化。
去年6月，维克西给居住在德国汉诺威的马库斯?格伦德曼(Markus Grundmann)发了封邮件，35岁的格伦德曼是位网络安全技术员。维克西希望了解有关开放域名系统服务器网络(Open Root Server Network)的信息，这个网络正是格伦德曼创立的。
格伦德曼起初还以为邮件是冒名写的。他不敢相信互联网系统的中坚人物维克西要和他合作。他对维克西说，因为不信任布什政府及其外交政策，所以2002年2月他建立了ORSN。格伦德曼担心如果美国想要袭击一个国家，它可以不费吹灰之力地“关闭”这个国家的域名系统，其军队和政府的互联网通讯就会瘫痪。
维克西说他对政治问题并不感兴趣，但是去年9月他同意和格伦德曼一起运作ORSN 13个镜像中的一个。维克西还将这个以前不为人知的德国组织的网站链接放在了他的个人网页上。
这激怒了互联网程序设计师和技术人员社团，维克西本人也是其中的重要一员。互联网创始人之一文顿?瑟夫(Vinton Cerf)在电话里质问维克西，“你脑子里在想什么？你让大家关注一个分化互联网的组织有什么好处？”
维克西说，他认为欧洲这些互联网组织可以让ICANN意识到实际存在的各种问题。如果美国监管的ICANN意识到用户有了别的选择，在行动时就有可能更重视全球利益。
另外12位电脑科学家──他们大多数来自德国、奥地利和瑞士──同意帮助这个新的域名系统运作。有6个欧洲国家近50个互联网服务提供商现在都使用ORSN。
现在这样做只有象征意义，因为ORSN的域名目录和ICANN完全相同，ORSN的用户使用的路径也和ICANN系统相同，都连接至同一个网页上。不过ORSN并不创建或出售自己的域名。维克西说，如果ORSN这么做，他会马上退出这个组织。不过如果ORSN不同意ICANN的某个决定，它可以拒绝执行。
格伦德曼说，“互联网是美国政府的孩子，但现在孩子长大了，不能永远呆在家里。”
阿姆斯特丹一家名为UnifiedRoot的公司比ORSN走得更远。去年11月底，这家公司开始提供注册后缀的服务，后缀任由顾客选择，比如可以将.com的后缀换作公司自己的名称。注册后缀的价格为1,000美元，以后每年还需交纳250美元。
UnifiedRoot总经理埃里克?西伯特(Erik Seeboldt)表示，公司已经建立了自己的域名系统，并与包括阿姆斯特丹Schiphol Airport在内的一些公司达成了交易。这些公司可以将自己的品牌用作域名，拥有arrivals.schiphol这类地址。UnifiedRoot用户可以进入使用ICANN许可的所有域名的网址，而ICANN用户则不能进入类似.schiphol的网址。
西伯特说，“我们希望让自由和创新精神重新回到互联网世界。”互联网服务提供商Tiscali SpA在欧洲拥有500万注册用户，它也是土耳其使用UnifiedRoot域名系统规模最大的服务提供商之一。
一些不使用罗马字母的国家也开始动手筹划自己的互联网域名系统。中国用中文创立了三个域名──.中国、.公司、.网络，公众和公司可以在中国境内使用。
Minc.org负责人哈立德?法塔勒(Khaled Fattal)说，阿拉伯国家在过去一年半时间里也开始测试阿拉伯文的国家域名，这和ICANN系统的域名截然不同。Minc.org是一个致力于发展多种网络语言的非营利组织。
法塔勒表示，“如今并不存在一个全球的互联网，我们现在拥有的只是一个通行全球的英语互联网，这如何能满足成百上千万中国人和阿拉伯人的需要呢？”
ICANN对这些批评作出了回应。ICANN在12月举行的会议上决定让外国政府更多地参与决策，并加快了非英语域名的研发。
ICANN首席执行长保罗?图米(Paul Twomey)表示，分化反映出不同国家间的文化差异，比如有些国家习惯于政府的强硬管理，而包括美国在内的一些国家则更信任私人机构。图米表示，“我们还是更看重互联网的效能，不过我们也要将其他价值观和其他语言融入网络，而且还要保证互联网是一个整体。”
对有些人来说，这些措施还远远不够。中国互联网络信息中心(China Internet Network Information Center)负责国际事务的李广浩（音）表示，“我们希望ICANN能加快行动。”这个中心依据ICANN系统的标准在中国分配互联网协议地址，不过它也开发不受ICANN控制的中文后缀。
维克西表示他加入ORSN是为了表明自己的观点：那就是除非ICANN能更加包罗万象，否则，开发新域名系统的努力还将继续。他说，“我意识到这有可能会打开地狱之门，但我也希望这能引发人们的思考，'如果有更多种域名又会怎样呢？'”
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