ICANN -- Saturday morning techs

Greg Jenkins writes in response to this article in the WaPo (US insists on keeping control of web) that,

All routers and computers on the Internet share the same addressees with regards to where to send traffic. This is done by mirroring the information ICANN provides via their designated name servers (DNS). Anyone can setup their own DNS. This is mainly done by phone companies, internet service providers, domain registrars and large companies. This way every time a domain is entered into a Web browser the request does not have to go all the way across the Internet to ICANN to find out what the actual IP address is for a domain, it simply hits the local DNS that mirrors ICANN.

ICANN allocates these IP addresses that people use all over the Internet. If I setup shop in Australia I can contact ICANN and ask for a block of IP addresses so my computers have unique identifiers on the Web and people can send me email. In most cases your phone company takes care of this for you. They work with ICANN to get their own block of addresses and then allow their customers to borrow them. Once an IP address is identified and an email is sent it hops from node to node across the Internet and each one of these looks at the designated IP address and forwards it on toward its destination.

In really simple terms ICANN has given every computer on the Internet a unique number and it is the telecom companies that refer to them for this information to program their networks. In order for a battle over the Internet to occur it would require telecom companies to band together and begin getting their updates from somewhere else. Remember their systems would still work because all those computers under each telecom providers control would still have hard numbers assigned to them. However a communication gap would slowly grow as telecom companies referred to different DNS servers and now one IP is assigned in two places.

It only makes sense that each country has IP addresses that begin with a prefix that identifies a specific country much like phone numbers. Telecom companies could then refer to a different DNS server for say Australiaalone if ICANN shut them down. However, it is my understanding that ICANN was not very smart when giving out IP addresses in the beginning so they were not properly distributed in an orderly sequence.