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Government may step in to solve naming crisis.
As the Internet Society (ISOC) struggles to keep intact its fraying plan to revamp the Domain Naming System (DNS), some users fear the Internet is headed toward chaos or-worse yet-government intervention.
Internet professionals say that unless the global cyberspace community can achieve consensus regarding the much-criticized DNS, the Internet as we know it may cease to exist.
"Government intervention would be the death knell of the Internet as a viable international communications network," said John Servais, marketing director of Network Access Services, an Internet service provider based in Bellingham, Wash.
"We would then see private ones pop up," he said.
But implementation of the ISOC proposal to add seven new top-level domains and an unlimited number of domain name registrars would invite logistical nightmares, he said.
Ironically, ISOC's desire to quickly bring order to the Internet has instead raised the specter of a balkanized cyberspace. Since...