No one owns the internet, right?

At least, that's what you'd think. The internet exists all over the world, in multiple countries. It's both public and private. In the Western world, our modern infrastructure depends on it. Which is why the issues of stability and control have suddenly been thrust into the spotlight. There are issues at hand that the layperson should understand, which is why I'm bringing you this article.

Let's get some basic history out of the way. The original protocols the internet is based on are up to military specifications. They're decentralized; designed to be able to withstand the destruction of part of the network while retaining functionality. That's because the internet was designed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the United States military. I won't bore you with the details. All you need to know is that the internet expanded to educational and then commercial uses and has been burgeoning ever since. However, the internet still retains this aspect of decentralization, so it's impossible to do something that will crash the entire internet... for the most part, anyway.

There is, however, a very important element of internet functionality which is hierarchical, rather than distributed. It's the Domain Name System, or DNS. We use it every day, and the usability of the internet as we know it is dependent on it's existence. But what is a domain name, exactly?

Every computer on the internet has an IP address which identifies it for the purposes of TCP/IP networking. Even if your computer savvy is relatively low, you've probably seen an IP address before. IPv4 addresses come in formats like:

209.139.232.228

That's the IP address for my server, which hosts Geekman's World. Of course, we'd have a lot of trouble navigating the internet if we had to remember scores of 12-digit numbers. So we have domain name servers. DNS servers allow us to associate numbers with names, which our easier for our puny human brains to remember.

www.geekman.ca.

The domain name is a hierarchy, read from right to left. What most people don't realize is that every domain name has a period at the end. Try entering it in your web browser, it works. Most software simply omits the period because it's redundant. That period represents the root domain. Let's say we enter a URL (a website address) into a web browser on a computer. The computer will ask it's local DNS server for a resolution; to give it an IP number which the computer can use to locate the server on the network. In theory, the resolution would occur something like this:

.	The root domain is queried regarding the top-level domain of ".ca". A root domain server points the query to CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, which is responsible for the .ca domain.
.ca	According to the CIRA name servers, the domain "geekman" is handled by Atomation Web Solutions (Andrew's servers, which handle my DNS services).
.geekman	Atomation's servers contain a record for the "www" subdomain, which points the query to my Mac G3 box.
www	The name resolution is now complete. My web server responds to your computer's web browser.

In practice, it doesn't usually happen this way. Because DNS records don't change all that often, domain name queries are cached by your ISP's DNS servers. This reduces number of queries and thus the strain on the DNS system at all levels (especially the root domain servers, which are rumored to receive upwards of a thousand DNS queries per second).

Every country has it's own top-level domain (.ca, .fr, .de, .uk, .au). There are also other top-level domains for particular uses (.edu, .org, .net, .tv, .mil). See here for a full list. Every top-level domain is controlled by a regulatory authority in its respective country.

The root domain service is provided by 13 servers, which exist in multiple physical locations around the world. They're managed by such authorities as Verisign, NASA, the US Military, and RIPE. In theory, if one managed to disable all the root name servers long enough, the entire DNS system would fail, and we'd likely be unable to continue using the internet in any useful manner. That's a highly unlikely scenario, though. Each root name server likely exists as multiple computers in multiple locations, all running different operating systems, different name sever software on different hardware. Nonetheless, the continued operation of the DNS service is essential to our practical day to day usage of the internet. It's security is vital to our infrastructure and economy.

So, who controls the root-level domain?

Surprise, surprise, it's the U.S. government. More specifically, it's the United States Department of Commerce. This makes sense, since the internet was originally a project of the United States Army, the DNS system has always been under the control of the U.S. government. Now, here's where things get interesting: Back in 1998, the United States government said that by 2006, they would turn over control of the root domain to ICANN: an international authority charged with control of the DNS system. Well, the deadline is nearing, and in a recent statement released by the U.S. Department of Commerce guess what they announced?

Surprise again: the United States government will not be turning over control of the root domain to an international authority. Once more, the Bush administration has hocked a big loogie in the face of multilateralism, because they CAN. The motivations of the United States government should be obvious to anyone: the economies and infrastructure of the west are dependent upon the continued functioning of the internet. In American hands, the root domain service is safe behind iron bars, and the Americans aim to keep it that way.

And you know, that's fine. IF they continue to operate the root domain in neutral and purely technical manner, keeping politics out of global network administration.

However, looking at the presentation given by the Dept. of Commerce, the motivations are pretty far from apolitical. The U.S. believes that it controls the internet because it created the net originally. It will, "maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file." Did they say "authorizing"? I can't help wondering if it will ever come to the U.S. deleting the top-level domain for a country it doesn't particularly like, such as Iran or North Korea. The declaration also states that, "Given the breadth of topics potentially encompassed under the rubric of Internet governance there is no one venue to appropriately address the subject in its entirety." Translation being, "United Nations: keep your nose out of our damn business."

What the United States doesn't realize is that this flagrant display of unilateralism on their part may cause more disruption than handing the root domain over to an international authority. Governments frustrated with U.S. control (particularly E.U. countries and the middle east) may simply establish their own root domain. This would essentially cause the internet to break up into separate networks, with DNS resolution not quite functioning consistently around the globe.

Just because the internet began in the United States doesn't mean that the U.S. should control it indefinitely. The internet is a global phenomenon; open and free of censorship. That's how it should stay, and that's why DNS should be controlled by the international community. THAT's democracy. If one person could be trusted to rule over many without the consultation of the many, we wouldn't need to fear dictatorship. But unfortunately, humanity doesn't operate that way.

 

Other Links:

The Register: Bush administration annexes internet