China Magnetics Corporation (CMC,
Technology developed by i-DNS.net International of Singapore allows companies to use Chinese characters in their domain names. Traditionally, domain names -- such as taipeitimes.com and acer.com -- have been limited to the 26 letters of the English alphabet and ordinals "0" through "9." The new system makes domain names such as
CMC, better known as a maker of computer storage media, announced that its affiliate, Chinese Registration (
Chinese Registration joins local Internet service provider TimeNet, which announced a similar deal with i-DNS in December.
"We cannot find just one local partner -- that will lead to a monopoly," said James Seng, Chief Technology Officer at i-DNS.
TimeNet has an advantage over the newcomer, claims vice president, Rock Tsai. "We already have one month's experience, so we can do it faster. That's our advantage over Chinese Registration," Tsai said. "In fact we welcome Chinese Registration joining us in providing this service. We hope more companies will do so in future, which will bring people's attention to the service and make it more popular."
At the moment, relatively few people can access Web sites with Chinese names, because few ISPs have installed i-DNS software. According to Seng, only 10 ISPs out of hundreds in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and Singapore have installed i-DNS software.
He was unable to say how many customers each of these ISPs had -- a typical Asian ISP has less than 10,000, though some have hundreds of thousands. ISPs are companies, such as HiNet, that provide people with a connection to the Internet via a modem and phone line.
Even if a user's ISP has not installed the i-DNS software, many computer users can still access Web sites with Chinese names by modifying their Web browser settings, i-DNS.net says.
ISPs contacted by the Taipei Times, including Seednet and Transend, said they were not using i-DNS software, but would consider adopting it if it was simple to install. Most ISPs and Web site operators, such as Kimo, seem to have, at best, a hazy impression of the i-DNS service.
Frank Chen, Vice President of Yam, a major Chinese language Web portal and search engine, said his company wanted to know more before it registered a Chinese-language domain name. "I understand that registering domain names under a Chinese name requires some standards ... it requires cooperation with all the Chinese Internet community. We're not sure if this particular venture [i-DNS] is standards based -- we're not aware of any standards."
"Frankly speaking, at the moment there is no authority in charge of multilingual domain names," Seng admitted.
Various organizations, including i-DNS, are calling for the formation of a non-profit body to oversee this area. In addition, i-DNS.net has submitted a proposal to the Internet Engineering Task Force, an internationally-recognized standards organization, Seng said, and would abide by the decisions of that body.
"I think registering is a benefit of course," Chen said, "but in terms of using the Web with a browser, definitely we still have to use English. So it helps, but it's not a must."
"Let's not forget the China market. How well is China going to receive this?" he added.
Internet regulatory authorities in China are also believed to be studying ways of adopting Chinese domain names.
However, Seng said that, although the cooperation of regional Internet authorities was desirable, the i-DNS plan could proceed with or without their approval.
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