On April 2nd, 2013, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) officially announced: after the global recruitment facing all the domain name registries worldwide, it ultimately selected China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), Nominet in the United Kingdom and Neustar in the United States as the three Emergency Back-End Registry Operators (EBERO) of new generic top-level domain (New gTLD), in order to ensure that within 24 hours an EBERO can take over the operation of any New gTLD registry in the world, continue its normal resolution and ensure its end-users’ normal access, in the case that a New gTLD registry fails to work in the world.

With the introduction of the New gTLD program, thousands of new domain name registries will emerge. Technical and operational problems may paralyze a top-level domain registry and stop it from operating normally, and in consequence paralyze the website and services based on such top-level domain. To this end, ICANN launched the EBERO Mechanism of the new gTLDs.

EBERO will start in the case that a New gTLD registry can not provide the five critical services, including DNS resolution and whois query, or that a top-level domain is removed from a registry. The three EBERO organizations have been set up in different parts of the world, so that the EBERO mechanism can still run smoothly, even if any Force Majeure including natural disasters occurs in certain regions. Through this mechanism the impact of an operational accident of a New gTLD registry on the global domain name system can be reduced.

As the only EBERO in the Asia-Pacific region, CNNIC, with the capability to take over any New gTLD in the world within 24 hours and resume its normal operation, will be in charge of the emergency hosting of the new gTLDs in the Asia-Pacific region. The services include the emergency transfer of New gTLDs and their resolution recovery for domain name registries.

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 

CNNIC:It is an administration and service organization set up on June 3, 1997 upon the approval of the competent authority and undertakes the responsibilities as the national Internet network information center.

Nominet:It was founded in 1996 as the national domain name registry of the United Kingdom, and is in charge of the registration administration and service of .uk, the ccTLD of the United Kingdom.

Neustar:Founded in 1996, it serves as the registry for generic top-level domain .biz and the ccTLD of the United States, .us, as well as provides other services including real-time information, the Internet and telecommunications.