Internet's Root Dns Servers To Stay On Us Soil

A decision by the United States to indefinitely retain oversight of the main computers

that control internet traffic drew concerns Friday from foreign officials, many of whom

want an international body in charge instead.

 

"When the internet is being increasingly utilized for private use, by businesses and so

forth, there is a societal debate about whether it's befitting to have one country

maintaining checks on that," said Masahiko Fujimoto of the Ministry of Internal Affairs

and Communications' data communications division. "It's likely to fuel that debate."

 

"The signals and words and intentions and policies need to be clear so all of us benefiting

in the world from the internet and in the U.S. economy can have confidence there will

be continued stewardship," Gallagher told The Associated Press on Thursday.

 

He said the declaration, officially made in a four-paragraph statement posted online, was

in response to growing security threats and increased reliance on the internet globally

for communications and commerce.

 

Though the computers themselves â 13 in all, known as root servers â are in private

hands, they contain government-approved lists of the 260 or so internet suffixes, such

as ".com."

Source:

Wired News

 

I think that governments should stay out of it completely and it should be

a corporate handled entity.

it should be worldwide...

 

Im not to bothered about where they stay, aslong as the net stays up and isnt regulated by the US I dont see any sort of problems with that. Although one thing I have wanted to know about the root servers, was their specification, their software and hardware.

Although one thing I have wanted to know about the root servers, was their specification, their software and hardware.

Yeah, I myself always wondered how they work and how I could one day configure one of some sort.

To the topic at hand. I'd much rather the systems be handled by the UN instead. The us are my friendly neighbours....But they are slightly power hungry, and I wouldn't want alot of valuable date to be lost because the US wanted to have control over it.

Although, transporting those 13computers could cause problems themselves, possibly. So I guess I'd rather just have them in the un if it would eb possible to guarentee no problems in transportation. Or better yet. The ever so peacefull....Canada

Haha yea keeping them here in good ol Canuck territory would be cool, but I agree with the sentiment that where they are is fairly irrelevant. I mean the US has as much to lose by net failures as anyone else so they wont NOT put the effort into keeping them all running as well as possible, and I mean if they EVER tried to regulate it...well..it wouldn't be long before the other nations stepped in and made sure the servers went international

The main reason there is a raised eye-brow to the fact that the US gov. has flat out stated now that they will not let the main Root Servers be moved, or pointedly replaced with new servers off of US soil is this. Some people beleive that there is more to what the so called "root servers" then just DNS work.In actuality think of this, not only are the master DNS records kept on these servers but they also keep stats on how many hits they get, where they come from (i.e. what country, state-province, ISP, etc..) and lots of other info; if you beleive rumor...and if you don't please take the blue pill...Also by having the very servers that "control" the major flow of data and "supply" the DNS's of ISPs with their master lists, under the control of one gov. then that gov. could send out conflicting data streams and really screw up the flow of info on the 'net. Thats what people are worried about, the fact that should someone really want to and figured a way to do so messing with the root servers honestly could mess stuff up for everyone. The real question I have is, how much damage would be caused if even 4 of the root servers went down?

I believe they shuld stay here, on US Soil. After all i havent seen the entire internet crash yet

I wonder if there are really 13 root DNS servers or they are just the visible side of it all. As pointed out before, a government that has control over all the internet flow can cause havoc, why would the US let go of it, if they want to have control over every single aspect of the globe? And because of that, I don't think that US government agencies would just let the internet "flow freely", being them who initially created it, with a purpose of course.

I wonder if there are really 13 root DNS servers or they are just the visible side of it all. As pointed out before, a government that has control over all the internet flow can cause havoc, why would the US let go of it, if they want to have control over every single aspect of the globe? And because of that, I don't think that US government agencies would just let the internet "flow freely", being them who initially created it, with a purpose of course.

The Internet, with it's protocol and "www" as we know was initially thought up by Tim Berners Lee, not the US government. However, claiming a corporate identity should take control isn't perhaps the best of ideas. The difference with a government and corporation, is that a corporation has less problems being less transparent about it's workings. A government is a little more fragile, as in, it has to be a little more careful on how it effects the public reactions (please don't pull elaborate conspiracy theories on me, I'm sick of paranoid, mass-hysteria). If you would let a corporate identity handle the web, you might get the NEt Neutrality issue that's going on. A corporate identity would be given control on what you get to see, what now, and how much you have to pay for. After all, a company large enough to (COULD) take this kind of duty on them would be a juggernaut like Microsoft.

Now, we wouldn't want that, would we?

I don't have much of a problem over it at the moment. As long as the internet remeains as unrestricted as it is today that's okay. However back up servers in Europe wouldn't hurt.No, Corporate entitiy should control the internet, not good for public competition.