In the past 20 years, Chinese domain names, as a symbol of China culture, have been implanted into the Internet, and its difficult pace is like a tortuous movie.
Nowadays, the popularity and development of Chinese domain names have deeply affected China's influence and voice in the Internet. Domain name ". China "appears in the national top-level domain name". CN "solemnly declared China's information sovereignty to the international community. From 65438 to 0994, China was officially connected to the Internet. In the same year. CN domain name server returns to China. Three years later, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) was established. Qian, a researcher in computer network information center, recalled the scene at that time in an interview: seven people, an office, wires all over the floor, and a server the size of a desktop mainframe. ...
Although the equipment is relatively simple, the establishment of CNNIC means that the global root domain name system has raised the banner of China, and the desire of several generations of China Internet technology experts to build a national top-level domain name system has finally come true.
There is no doubt that China has become the country with the largest number of netizens in the world, which is enough to become an Internet power. However, due to language constraints, China has been unable to qualify as an Internet power-the webpage is in Chinese, and the content of browsing is in Chinese, but the domain name as the basic service of the Internet is in English.
"For the global Chinese who speak Chinese as their mother tongue, English will always be a foreign monk." Li Xiaodong, the head of CNNIC, told the reporter of China Science News that "using Chinese domain names and Chinese e-mails will help to enhance national consciousness and cultural identity, and promote the convenience of cultural and language exchanges among Chinese communities around the world."
Since then, CNNIC Internet experts have been committed to the application of Chinese domain names and the formulation of international standards.
According to Li Xiaodong's memory, due to the particularity of China people, when applying for ". China "domain name, the first thing to be solved is the equivalence problem of" China/China ". "This is not a problem in the eyes of China people, but it has set many obstacles for China domain names to be written into the global root domain name system." He said.
In 2000, CNNIC and Internet Information Centers of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan (CNNIC, TWNIC, HKNIC, MONIC) formally initiated the establishment of Chinese Domain Name Coordination Federation (CDNC) in Beijing. Internet workers in Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan have an interactive platform to formulate technical standards and registration management norms for Chinese domain names, coordinate the operation of Chinese domain names in relevant countries and regions, and actively carry out exchanges and cooperation with Internet organizations in order to formulate and launch relevant international standards as soon as possible.
Even within CDNC, there are many heated discussions on this issue.
"I remember the most difficult thing is that there were two meetings a week. Experts from Japan, Chinese mainland and Taiwan Province Province all went to Beijing to discuss solutions." Li Xiaodong said, "At the meeting, everyone's arguments were flying, and some people were really angry. They all want to find a solution to eliminate their differences. "
The solution was finally successfully launched, which surprised the whole Internet community. "We can be unified so quickly, which provides a good example for solving similar problems." Li Xiaodong said.
In April, 2004, CNNIC cooperated with TWNIC, JPNIC and KRNIC to formulate the multilingual domain name registration standard of China, Japan and Korea (No.RFC3743), which is the second international Internet standard in China. This standard mainly provides a scientific and perfect technical solution for solving the equivalence problem of simplified and traditional Chinese characters in multilingual domain names. RFC3743 is China's contribution to the equivalent interoperability technology of variant forms on the world Internet.
The power and voice of China users have attracted the attention of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). IETF sent an invitation letter to CNNIC, which opened a solemn moment for China to formulate international standards. In March, 20001,CNNIC technical experts represented China for the first time at the 48th meeting of Internet Engineering Task Force held in the United States.
The meeting didn't go as smoothly as expected. Among more than 300 participants, only three are from China, and money is one of them. "No foreign expert is willing to patiently listen to us explain the value of Chinese domain names." The scene of the meeting brought indescribable frustration to Qian.
This frustration has also lasted for a long time in the minds of technical experts in China. At many international conferences, as long as China participants call for the promotion of Chinese domain names, some people will ask thorny questions-if multilingual domain names are really implemented, other words appearing in the address bar will be as unrecognizable as garbled words for English-speaking users. Isn't this the division of the internet?
In the memory of many Internet experts such as Li Xiaodong, the initial stage of Chinese domain name is full of hardships. It is the unremitting efforts of experts, including mediation, deployment and implementation policies of simplified and traditional equivalent solutions, that make Chinese domain names gradually step onto the stage of the world Internet. In the Internet world, ICANN has the highest decision-making power in the global Internet and is often regarded as "the United Nations in the Internet world". Whether Chinese domain names can be used on the Internet depends on ICANN's decision.
Li Xiaodong and others, as representatives, attended ICANN meetings in Kenya and the United States successively, and had a lot of communication with their foreign counterparts, including mediation in simplifying and traditional equivalent solutions, deploying and implementing policies.
However, ICANN's directorship has always been held by representatives of Internet developed countries such as Europe, America and Japan. The number of netizens is second only to that of China in the United States. Although he attended many meetings, he never had a decisive voice in ICANN.
Until June 2003, Qian was successfully elected as a member of ICANN's board of directors for a three-year term. China experts can finally participate in Internet decision-making.
Money is one of the important Internet pioneers in China. In the early 1990s, Qian was the technical director of Zhongguancun (00093 1, Guba) regional education and scientific research demonstration network, which was the prototype of China Internet. At the same time, it was through his repeated appeals at international conferences that China finally realized the formal access to the Internet.
In March this year, Qian was elected to the Internet Hall of Fame of the Internet Society (ISOC), becoming the second China person to receive this honor after Academician Hu Qiheng, former vice president of China Academy of Sciences.
Since then, China, as a big Internet country, has its own voice in the international Internet community. The efforts of China experts to promote Chinese domain names are gradually emerging, especially in the formulation of international standards.
In 2006, CNNIC led the establishment of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) Working Group on Internationalization Standards for E-mail Addresses (EAI), with Li Xiaodong as co-chairman. This is the first IETF working group co-chaired by China people.
Two years later, IETF officially released three core standards for the internationalization of email addresses: RFC5335, RFC5336 and RFC5337. Among them, RFC 5336“SMTP extension supports international email address ",which plays a core role, was formulated by CNNIC.
With the participation of more and more experts from China, writing technical issues or international standards ". The problem of China entering the global root domain name system has been solved one by one. At the 36th annual meeting of ICANN held in 2009, ICANN voted to adopt the fast-track implementation scheme for non-English domain name suffixes such as ".". China ",as well as the international application and global deployment of non-English domain names represented by". China will officially enter the "fast lane".
At the end of 2009, CNNIC formally submitted the international application of "Simplified and Traditional" on behalf of China. China "domain name to ICANN.
On June 20 10, at the 38th annual meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) held in Brussels, the ICANN board voted to complete all the evaluation links of the "international application". China "simplified and traditional domain names. This means ". China ",as a Chinese top-level domain name, has been formally incorporated into the global Internet root domain name system. Rod Beckstrom, then president and CEO of ICANN, said after the meeting: "This resolution is a great change for China netizens all over the world. One fifth of the world's population speaks Chinese, which means that China's domain name has increased by 654.38+0 billion potential netizens. " After years of accumulation, a lot of substantial progress has been made in promoting Chinese domain names to be written into the global root domain name system.
Since 20 12, CNNIC has successively promoted the release of IETF's core technical standards on Chinese mail (multilingual mail), such as RFC653 1, RFC6855 and RFC6856. On June 20 12, researcher Qian officially sent the first multilingual email.
20 13 In April, Coremail, a well-known company specializing in mail technology research and development, officially released the first commercial software supporting international multilingual mail technology in Beijing. In July this year, Postfix, one of the three mainstream open source mail systems in the world, released a new Postfix system that can support IETF multilingual mail protocol standards on its official homepage. In August, Google, a global mail service provider, officially announced its support for international technical standards such as IETF RFC653 1 in its official blog.
Nowadays, after more than four years of operation and promotion of international multilingual e-mail, Chinese domain names have become the multilingual domain names with the earliest application, the largest registered scale and the largest number of users, and become the basic resources that affect the global Chinese Internet community and expand the influence of Chinese Internet.
After more than ten years' efforts, the "Chinese World" built by Internet technology experts in China has begun to benefit Chinese people all over the world. Rod Baker storm, former CEO of ICANN, commented: "This is a big step forward for half of mankind who use non-Latin languages, such as the whole of Asia and Africa and other Arabic, Chinese and Korean regions in the world."
Internet technology experts believe that the use of Chinese domain names will get rid of the shackles of 26 Latin alphabet websites, which will greatly contribute to the popularization and utilization of the Internet in non-Latin alphabet countries and narrow the gap with Latin alphabet countries.
Since 20 10, most central and state organs and units in China have submitted special Chinese domain names to the domain name registration management center of the government and non-profit organizations, and more than half of them have been officially registered and put into use. For example, if you visit the website of Chinese Academy of Sciences, you can directly enter "Chinese Academy of Sciences". Public welfare "is in the browser address bar.
In July this year, the new Chinese generic top-level domain name ". Company and ". Network "is officially open for registration, which is another significant progress in the global strategic deployment of Chinese top-level domain names since then. China was officially incorporated into the global Internet root domain name system as a national top-level domain name in 20 10.
Li Xiaodong pointed out: "From the perspective of national strategy, the promotion of Chinese domain names will become the main development trend of domain name diversification and deep cultural penetration in the next generation Internet, and it is a necessary link to seize the right to speak." He believes that actively promoting Chinese domain names will further facilitate China users to surf the Internet, narrow the digital divide, promote mother tongue communication, enhance the cohesion of the global Chinese community, and further strengthen the strong position of "Chinese-the symbol of the Chinese nation" in the world Internet communication, which is a necessary guarantee for China's strategy of building a cultural power on the Internet battlefield.
For more than ten years, China Internet technology experts not only promoted the process of international negotiations, but also pushed all kinds of complex technologies of Chinese domain names from laboratories to international standards. In the future, Chinese domain names will establish a veritable "Chinese kingdom" on the Internet.