Web could break down, chief warns!

[Marks]

Metro (WED);

INTRODUCING non-English characters to website addresses could 'break the whole Internet', an expert has warned. Some countries are pushing to add Arabic, Chinese and other foreign characters to the 37 letters currently permitted in domain names. Unless handled carefully, this could make Internet searching more difficult and fraud easier according to Paul Twomey, chief executive of the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN is responsible for administering domain names worldwide. Mr Twomey said: 'If we get this wrong we could very easily and permanently break the Internet.'

 

[webfreak08]

Very interesting article about IDNs - do you have a link?

 

[Marks]

No I typed it up from the Newspaper that I picked up this morning

UPDATE: Here's the E-Article: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=26187&in_page_id=34

 

[ldcdc]

The article lacks depth. Why and how could those things happen?

 

[Marks]

I can understand that the concept of the domains could break not the internet. If they implemented it on the TLD's such as .com, .net and .org it would become a disaster if not done correctly.

Fraud wise theirs enough of it on the Internet I'm not sure how it will fraud easier.

Internet Searches it would but if you are American or Australian or British you probably wouldn't tend to look for a website address in German or Spanish or French in most scenarios.

If agreed to implement it, I don't see it happening for quite some time. ICANN/IANA have enough things to worry about including the new sponsored domain extension requests, The low quantity of IPv4 and the new leading version IPv6.

 

[EQWebHost]

I find that hard to beleive, but I am no internet analyst. It sounds to me liek all those emails going around saying "MSN is going to close if you dont pay $xxx now". Just something to get people sturred up!

 

[SuperbHosting]

I can understand that the concept of the domains could break not the internet. If they implemented it on the TLD's such as .com, .net and .org it would become a disaster if not done correctly.

Fraud wise theirs enough of it on the Internet I'm not sure how it will fraud easier.

Internet Searches it would but if you are American or Australian or British you probably wouldn't tend to look for a website address in German or Spanish or French in most scenarios.

If agreed to implement it, I don't see it happening for quite some time. ICANN/IANA have enough things to worry about including the new sponsored domain extension requests, The low quantity of IPv4 and the new leading version IPv6.

Give it a few more years. We will all be asking what is IPv4? and also what is windows XP?

 

[Marks]

Give it a few more years. We will all be asking what is IPv4? and also what is windows XP?

True about IPv4 however I disagree with Windows XP, A majority of people hate Windows Vista and I refuse to update until the very last update of Windows XP.

A report in the newspaper said on Friday that 300 Students who are taking A Level Computing were asked how much space can a ordinary Floppy Disk Hold? Only 17% of them knew that it was 1.44MB.

So true that old things will be be forgotten.