Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

EU Claims Internet Could Fall Apart Next Month

Posted by Zonk on from the seems-a-little-sky-is-falling dept.

freaktheclown writes "The battle for the control of the Internet could hit a climax next month, with the EU saying that it could 'fall apart.' From the article: 'The European commission is warning that if a deal cannot be reached at a meeting in Tunisia next month the Internet will split apart. At issue is the role of the US government in overseeing the Internet's address structure, called the domain name system (DNS), which enables communication between the world's computers. It is managed by the California-based, not-for-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) under contract to the US Department of Commerce.'"

3 of 1,401 comments (clear)

  1. ICANN does not control IPs or routing in any way by Johannes · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ICANN does not control IP allocation at all. IP blocks are allocated by IANA to regional internet registries (ARIN for the Americas, RIPE for Europe and APNIC for Asia to name a few). The regional registries then allocate smaller blocks to organizations in their area.

    Routing is different still. No registry guarantees the IP blocks they allocate will be globally routable. Most network providers have their own criteria for determining which networks they will accept routes for.

    So, as you can see, ICANN has no part in the allocation or routing of IP addresses.

  2. A brief word of sense to the EU bashers out there. by ethnocidal · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The EU is not trying to destroy the internet, it is trying to do quite the opposite; it has recognised that countries like China, Brazil and Iran are making strong moves to setting up their own independant root servers, irrespective of the US.

    They are trying to act as brokers between this position, which is not in the interest of the EU, and the maverick US position, which flatly disclaims any notion of international coordination on these issues. Repeat after me: the EU is not trying to split the internet, they are trying to maintain the current cohesion.

    They are a broker between two arguments, and should be applauded as such, rather than vilified and slandered as 'splitters' or malcontents.

    'The EU does not intend to scrap Icann. It would continue in its current technical role.

    Instead Europe is suggesting a way of allowing countries to express their position on internet issues, though the details on how this would happen are vague.

    "We have no intention to regulate the internet," said Commissioner Reding, reassuring the US that the EU was not proposing setting up a new global body.

    Rather she talked of a "model of cooperation", of an international forum to discuss the internet.'

    [Taken from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4327928.stm

  3. Re:Color me stupid.. by tetrode · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yep - half of the internet content is not in your language.

    But don't be afraid - most of the internet content is not in mine anyway - so I adapted and learned to read and write in other languages.

    Which obviously helped me a lot in getting a bigger view of the world.

    Have you ever been to wikipedia? Look at the main page at http://www.wikipedia.org/ and note that there are some languages there. And some content. The German has half of the content of the English. If I sum up the other languagees that I can read I almost come to the number of English pages.

    Just an example.

    Mark