China to launch root domain name server

[Ninja]

Just came across this article on Sina.

China will set up a mirror server for Chinese netizens to visit Websites whose domain names end with .com or .net, Sina.com reported today.

Instead of being served by overseas domain servers for making visits, the new server will provide a domain name system or "DNS" function of its own, which will guarantee the security for netizens visiting from China and also raise the linking speed.

China Network Communications Group signed with US-based VeriSign Incorporation, the world's largest domain name registry services provider, to launch the Chinese mirror server of root domain name on December 14.

The US Department of Commerce announced last year the supervision of root domain name servers, whose second role is to continuously control the World Wide Web, which caused the security of online information to become a focus in the IT industry, Sina.com said.

Netizens visiting .com or .net Websites from China used to depend on overseas domain servers to provide DNS services, which means both the information upload or download can be inspected.

Any thoughts on what the implications of this will be?

[roddy]

I'm not sure I can see any, although I'm quite happy to admit I'm not familiar with the underlying technology. China's already able to block / monitor any in-country traffic it wants. If they're just mirroring something locally, I don't see what difference it will make.

[tuxoar]

The article below is very confusing and makes little sense to me. I have a somewhat decent knowledge of how the dns system works and that article leaves me confused... perhaps a bad translation job.

Regardless, IMHO....

Implications:

1. Websites hosted within China will load significantly faster because it will no longer be necessary to go overseas to convert domain names to ips.

2. It potentially will be easier to restrict traffic to certain sites. Honestly, I think they already do that well enough through over technologies similar to firewalling and content filtering. To the end user, no big change here.

See below for many more articles of this process....Here

Also, notice the difference in the last paragraph between sina and the above. China Tech News makes more sense... in English anyway...