[ICANN]<http://www.icann.org/> News Alert https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2014-07-24-en ________________________________ ICANN News Alert -- China's 21Vianet Contributes to Stable and Resilient Internet with L-Root Instance | Introduction on Instance Helps Mitigate Network Outages, Delivers Improved Internet Experience 25 July 2014 [21vianet Logo] A new instance of L-Root has been installed in China, increasing the Domain Name System's (DNS) overall fault tolerance and its resilience against certain types of cyber threats, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. The launch of the server node is a joint operation between ICANN and China's 21Vianet Group, Inc (NASDAQ:VNET). As China's largest carrier-neutral Internet data center with more than 80 data centers in over 40 cities in China, 21Vianet supplied the equipment necessary for the installation of the new L-Root node. "We have selected Beijing as the initial site as Beijing is one of the largest Chinese cities, with one of the highest Internet penetration rates in the country," said Frank Meng, President of 21Vianet Group, Inc (NASDAQ:VNET). "But we will deploy in other major cities very shortly as part of our DNS Open Network program". DNS Open Network is a program by 21Vianet to build a trusted and robust DNS infrastructure that provide open peering with any ISPs and ICPs in China. This cooperation between both organizations is an effort to provide security, stability and resiliency to Chinese Internet users and reduce the response time they experience when making Domain Name System (DNS) queries. "The stability and resiliency of the global Internet continues to be strengthened with 21Vianet installation of the L-Root instances," said ICANN President and CEO Fadi Chehadé. "ICANN is working with other Chinese partners to bring in more L-Root instances into the country," said Kuek Yu-Chuang, ICANN's Vice President and Managing Director for ICANN Asia Pacific Hub. There are 13 "root," or fully authoritative, DNS servers, identified by alphabetic letters A through M - the "L" root being one. Computers locate one another on a network by using numeric addresses, while humans find it easier to use and remember names (for instance, users typically remember the domain name "ICANN.org" more easily than the Internet Protocol address, 2620:0:2d0:200::7). The Domain Name System (DNS) matches domain names with numeric addresses, in much the same way a phone book matches names to phone numbers. Spreading root information out geographically by duplicating the root servers leads to a resilient, dispersed system that cannot be taken offline by a problem at any single instance of a given DNS root server. For more information about L-root, please visit www.dns.icann.org/<http://www.dns.icann.org/>.