Redstate

Even the EU people don't even know what they mean by Top Level control.  

Other than divvying out IP address blocks there isn't much in the way of top level governming going on.  

Without going into too much detail:

The dispute is basically about the nameservers, that resolve redstate.org (and all otehr websites) into an IP address. There are 12 root nameservers (located around the world, but most in America). The comapny in charge of registering names does so under a contract with the US Dept on Commerce, which for some reason was given this to do by the Clinton administration. The Europeans want more say over the operation of the nameservers (and probably some of the money), or they threaten to set up their own servers. This is a bad idea for technical reasons, IMO, but lets look at the other arguments:

-yes, the US did create the internet. However, we didn't pay to wire up the rest of the world/Europe, so they can pretty much do what they want with the stuff they built.

-this is basically the free market at work. There are already "alternte root" servers that nobody uses, but that's because they lack a reason to do so. If the Europeans make their servers more attractive price/performance-wise, that's just the free market giving us a better solution.

Anyway, we "gave" the internet to the world for a variety of reasons, both economic and political. The increases in freedom around the globe, and the economic growth it inspired at home, have probably paid us back many times over and will continue to do so.

are free to create their own root domains.  

The root servers simply reference the root domains.  Seems rather pointless for the Europeans to take control of .com or .org.

Honestly I don't see this as the issue at all.  I suspect they are more concerned with the fact that the US is more likely to give preferential treatment to US organizations when assigning ip address space.  

We have many major american corporations that have rights over full Class A address space when they have absolutely no need for it.

Honestly this is just petulent griping.  The Internet is dominated by the US because of the free market and the origins of the Internet and not because of government control.  

"We have many major american corporations that have rights over full Class A address space when they have absolutely no need for it."

Yeah, and a lot of those companies, who got such address ranges before we started to bump into the limits of the ipv4 address space, were forced to give up some of those addresses.

That's not favoritism there.  It's just lingering effects of early mistakes in the allocation of addresses.

That's why we made ipv6 though.

Has given up it's Class A space?

Of course this is why IPv6 was introduced.  But it hasn't exactly spread like wildfire yet.   And I would suspect that the Europeans want to make sure they are involved when IPv6 does start gaining acceptance.

I expect a lot of companies have given some up, ever since the class A/B/C/D stuff became technically obsolete.

They will give them up.  Why would Merril Lynch do that if they didn't have to?  

According to this....

http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space

GE still owns a full class C

Merck does to

Apple

Halliburton(Probably just to annoy the far left)

Xerox

HP

DEC

Ford Motor Company

You think that these companies still need 16 million addresses?

Actually, large multinations just might be using those large blocks effectively.

As I'm sure you know, you don't necessarily use every address when you're using a block, instead 'wasting' some in order to make routing practical.

Some of these guys  probably have many facilities with large numbers of computers to keep talking to each other.

I mean didn't Xerox invent Ethernet?   Give them a break, heh.

Anyone, anywhere can put up a top-level domain server. If the governments of other countries want to control their own TLDs, then let them try. All that does is partition the DNS namespace. So if someone in, say, France wants to contact a web site in the US, then they'll either have to resolve the IP address with one of the existing (ICANN-controlled) nameservers, or they can pound sand. If other governments have an interest in keeping Americans from accessing their citizens' web sites, then let them try. It'll last until the same citizens complain about the lost traffic.

Partitioning DNS won't work because it destroys too much value. Like it or not, the US is the world's biggest economy and the biggest producer and consumer of ideas too. No one else is going to voluntarily cut themselves out of the action, regardless of what their governments tell them. So chill out about this.

As always, police states like China are the exceptions, but their people don't have free choice anyway. (And in fact, China has long been one of the greatest proponents of transferring ICANN to control by the UN.)

...moving to fully private addressing for their internal networks anyway. You don't need that many externally visible addresses, even for the largest corporate networks. The existing CIDR scheme seems to be holding up reasonably well, especially since the Internet stopped growing so fast a few years back. Also, with more enterprises going to private addressing, the Internet backbone routing tables aren't growing at crisis rates anymore. I think that's the real reason for the slow uptake of IPv6.

We should be thinking in advance. China is 5 times our size. Soon other countries will listen to them over us because that will be where the money is. They have already passed Japan to be the second largest economy in the world. The anger they have shown to Japan for their past history is minor compared to the wrath we will suffer when China no longer needs us.

What's your source on that economy size bit?

...when it comes to paranoia about China. (Just read some of my purple-prose diaries!)

But internet technology is different because it's largely controlled by the private sector (for now at least). So it will respond rapidly and efficiently to threats of disruption.

I know what you're thinking- China has long sought and may already have discovered a reliable way to fatally disrupt backbone routing at the start of a war (perhaps by exploiting vulnerabilities in BGP4). That also is a problem that can and will be solved by private-sector technologists.

how do I know that China is the second largest economy going?

the navy to counter china's?

I'm aware that China has passed Japan as a buyer of American debt, and passed Japan in our trade deficit with them, but I doubt their economy's gotten that much bigger that fast.

So some specific facts would  help a lot, thanks.

We're going way off topic so better keep it short.

I don't think any amount of military development on our part will counter the basic economic and cultural deterioration we're inflicting on ourselves. All the military experts I know have no doubt that we would wipe the floor with China's military in a head-to-head matchup today. But that balance will change over the next few decades, and I fear we may lack the resolve to defend ourselves anyway. Iraq is indeed our generation's Vietnam in its chilling effect on our national will to power.

In regard to size of economies, you can't really be sure because the Chinese are certainly underreporting. (Just look at the footprint they've left on global commodity markets.) They may have five times our population in raw numbers, but perhaps only about one sixth of that population will join the developed world anytime soon. China's economy is almost certainly quite a lot smaller than Japan's at this point by any reasonable measure. But they are growing like a house afire.

to finally have a clash between the economic freedom and poltical tyranny in the near future

but percapita is puny

it is reaching a grwth rate high

and some structural problems that will slow it

Maybe.  Depends on how utterly dependent China remains on exports to the USA.

If they're one thing the fascist "Communists" running that country want, it's stability with themselves and their cronies in power.

Throwing rocks at Japanese buildings won't threaten that.  Their economy will keep on chugging.

Launching missiles at the USA would threaten that.  Turning all of their American bonds into worthless paper, along with closing down their favorite dumping ground for cheap goods, would wreck their whole system.

Look at this.

I really hate to link this because it appears to show a Chinese economy almost three quarters the size of ours and twice Japan's. It's purportedly from CIA. Is this even possibly right???

My apologies to all if this turns out to be garbage. I can't see anything about the methodology in use here.

China Occupies Western North America

China's ability to arm 100 million soldiers with sharpened broom handles proves too much for American technology

Lacking the political will to use nuclear weapons on Canada, the United States has lost 30% of its land area and population to the bare-foot Chinese People's Army (CPA), even though an estimated 80 million men drowned or died of exposure on the march from China, across the Bering Strait, through Alaska and down British Columbia.

"They just kept coming!"

US soldiers reported that their positions were overrun as they ran out of bullets to kill their stick-weilding attackers.  "Bullets, bombs, missiles, tank treads....They just kept coming!" said Lt. Don Rollins, US Army, the only reported escapee from the horde of Chinese soldiers. "Thank god they didn't have guns!!" he exclaimed before collapsing from exhaustion.

EDITOR'S NOTE:  The xxxxxxxx Herald-Tribune would like to welcome our Chinese Overlords to North America.  We will cooperate in any way we can!

All Hail Our Chinese Masters!

The people of China have no tradition of freedom. They won't fight for it, especially after Tiananmen. And as long as the regime keeps delivering economic growth to their urban populations, they will not face a challenge.

Someone made a point about tiny per capita GDP. Absolutely right, but they have no way to deliver prosperity to their perhaps 1 billion rural inhabitants. The 200 million or so in the cities have per capita income that is nearing first-world standards.

But I do believe they are actively planning to achieve the world's respect as a top-tier military power, perceived as equal to or better than the US.

A little military blackmail against us, say over Taiwan, when the time is ripe, would be a great way to achieve that.

A hot war would be an unmitigated disaster for everyone on this planet. They won't start one unless they know they will win.

thinking such as yours is what has been destroying our country. I remember when Clinton and our own party assured American workers that we would only send away jobs that no one else wanted. We have been sending jobs from the computer industry among others.

You do have the right thinking to back Ms. Clinton

in 2008. You would do her proud.

Were you replying to my "Headline from the Future" or not?

I don't see how your reply has ANYTHING to do with what I posted...

I went to Michigan. Wolverines sssssssssuck this year :-(

are designed specifically to exploit our weaknesses in a fight for Taiwan.

It seems to me that you were implying that the

Chinese won't advance as a society and will always be backwards. Our economy is not a given. At the rate we are going , that could easily be us going barefoot. Heck, we probably won't have any factories left to make boots or weapons. The lawyers will have all the gun manufacturers out of business.Yada. Yada. Yada.

I implied nothing save the inherent superiority of NUMBERS over technology.

Also, it was satire.

Also, you have implied the exact opposite of what you accused me of implying.  

Also, do we actually manufacture boots domestically now?  Maybe army boots, but you wouldn't be wearing shoes right now without Chinese labor.

Do yourself a favor and re-read that post.

when your ICBMs that can hit LA and Seattle :-).

I know you were kidding, but I'll just throw this in: the Chinese have been developing an amphibious assault capability for the Taiwan Strait, not the Bering. The standard joke for years has been to call this mission the million-man swim, but I know some people who have stopped laughing about it just in the past year. China is making fast progress.

Still it's fun to imagine them replaying the migration of the Native Americans. Still LOL!

Trying to predict China is a lot like calling interest rates- all you know for sure is you'll be wrong, but it's still fun. I don't think China will move against Taiwan until well after the Beijing Olympics. If I were them, I'd be looking for a situation in which we will not fight. And I think that day is fast approaching.

I've talked to some very powerful people, nominally Conservative or at least Republican, who told me that the people of Taiwan will someday welcome the opportunity to rejoin their ethnic brothers in Greater China. Freedom, which to Anglo-Saxons is more precious than life, is just a convenience for Chinese, or so goes the theory. And just imagine President Clinton or her successor going on television to remind Americans that our domestic problems must take priority over outdated, imperialistic security guarantees, and that America needs a foreign policy that respects the desires of other nations.

The pieces are falling slowly in place for Taiwan to be thrown to the wolves. Munich 1938.

Unlike almost everyone in America (excepting strategists in the Pentagon), China takes the long view.  10 years, 20 years is nothing to them, as they don't have the burden of compromising every 2, 4, 6 years just to maintain their power.  

They want "One China."  The UN recognizes one China.  Our foreign policy de facto recognizes one China, even though we give lip service to the status quo of the ROC.  Yes, we have economic interests in Taiwan, but those are outweighed vastly (on the consumer-level) by our interests in PRC.

...it's still going to be a sad day when the ROC goes down.

Just to reiterate, we won't be able to do anything about it even if we wanted to.

The nuclear option.

Strategically, the only thing we need Taiwan for (for which China already doesn't compete with Taiwan) is semiconductors...

So, pragmatically, we CANNOT nuke any offensive strike by China into Taiwan without consigning our public to decades of economic depression and low to no standard-of-living increase.

It is often said that there are no more of the WW2 generation left.  I happen to agree that the majority of Americans are soft and weak, spoiled by our own success.  So you are correct in saying that "we won't be able to do anything about it" and I would add that "we" really don't want to.

or at least has been until recently. The world has been considering them a developing country. However, I wouldn't worry too much about the Chinese. We are the ones on the way to becoming a third world country. By the time this country becomes aware, it'll take years to turn it around.

numbers are, but at this point we have a pretty strong interest in mainland China, also.

islamofacists

7 mccain senators

democrat party voter fraud

not setting vcr for brit hume

nose bleeds  kidding

I said:

"Yes, we have economic interests in Taiwan, but those are outweighed vastly (on the consumer-level) by our interests in PRC."

Little humor is nice from time to time.

I misunderstood. Please accept my apologies and thanks for pointing that out.

The last thing I want is to talk past or be talked past :)

...why do they want it so badly? Besides, it's not the EU leading this charge - it's China, Iran, Cuba, Brazil and a bunch of nameless African Nations.

did people have to understand what they wanted before they asked for it?

...because they think it will make it easier for them to control what their own citizens, I mean subjects, get to see on the Internet.

with these companies owning that address space.  

I was simply pointing out why other nations might want to get involed in the IPv6 name space assignments.

FTR, I have a VERY hard time believing that any non-carrier would "need" a full Class A.  Most corporate machines are "hidden" behind firewalls and can use whatever IP space they want.