ICANN selects CNNIC, Neustar and Nominet as backup registry operators for New gTLDs

Marking another milestone in the implementation of the community-developed New gTLD Program, ICANN today announced the selection of three geographically diverse emergency back-end registry operators, or EBEROs. The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), Neustar, Inc. and Nominet were selected to guarantee domain names within a new gTLD continue to resolve in the event of a failure by a new TLD operator.

Emergency back-end registry operators are activated only if a registry operator fails to provide or is unable to sustain five critical registry functions temporarily or in the case of transition from one registry operator to another. Having them in different regions of the world reduces the chance that a natural disaster would affect all three at any one time.

“The impending new gTLDs represent a new phase in the history of the internet, and we’re delighted to play a key role supporting them as an EBERO, sitting at the heart of the expanding global domain name space,” said Lesley Cowley, CEO, Nominet.

EBEROs mitigate risk that a failed new TLD operator could impact the stability and security of the Domain Name System. However, EBEROs are limited in the services they can provide. For example, EBEROs will maintain critical registry functions but will not provide any additional services that a TLD operator may have offered its customers, such as web hosting or network analytics. The critical functions covered by EBEROs are:

1. DNS resolution for registered domain names
2. Operation of Shared Registration System
3. Provision of Whois service
4. Registry data escrow deposits
5. Maintenance of a properly signed zone in accordance with DNSSEC requirements

The three selected organizations met stringent technical requirements and demonstrated years of experience in operating domain name services, registration data directory services and extensible provisioning protocol services.