The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC; ) is a public institution affiliated with the

Ministry of Industry and Information Technology The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) is the sixth-ranked executive department of the State Council of the People's Republic of China. It is responsible for regulation and development of the postal service, Internet, wireles ...

. Founded on 3 June 1997 and based in

Zhongguancun Zhongguancun ( Chinese: 中关村) is a major technology hub in the Haidian District, Beijing, China. Zhongguancun occupies a band between the northwestern Third Ring Road and the northwestern Fourth Ring Road in the northwestern part of Bei ...

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

, the center manages the country code top-level domain name of the People's Republic of China, namely the .cn domain name.

Responsibility areas

Domain name registry service

CNNIC is responsible for operating and administering China’s

domain name registry A domain name registry is a database of all domain names and the associated registrant information in the top level domains of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet that enables third party entities to request administrative control of a d ...

. CNNIC manages both the " .cn" country code top level domain and the Chinese domain name system (internationalized domain names that contain

Chinese characters Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represe ...

). As of April 2017, the total number of Chinese domain names was about 21 million. As of January 2017, CNNIC only opened the CN domain to registered businesses, required supporting documentations for domain registration such as business license or personal ID, and suspended overseas registrars even for domestic registrants. CNNIC denied that it mandated existing personal domain names to be transferred to businesses.

Trend Micro is an American-Japanese cyber security software company. The company has globally dispersed R&D in 16 locations across every continent excluding Antarctica. The company develops enterprise security software for servers, containers, and cloud ...

suggested this move was still not enough to stop modern security threats from the .cn domain.

IP address and Autonomous System number (AS number) allocation service

CNNIC allocates

Internet Protocol The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet. IP ...

(IP) addresses and AS Numbers to domestic ISPs and users. CNNIC is a National Internet Registry (NIR) acknowledged by the Asia-Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC). In late 2004 CNNIC launched an “ IP Allocation Alliance” which simplified the procedures for obtaining

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface i ...

es.

Catalogue Database Service

CNNIC is responsible for the creation and maintenance of the state top-level network catalog

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

. This database provides information on

Internet user The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks that consists of private, publ ...

s, web addresses, domain names, and AS numbers.

Technical research on Internet addressing

CNNIC conducts technical

research Research is creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge. It involves the collection, organization, and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness to ...

and undertakes state technical projects based on its administrative and practical network technology experience.

Internet survey and statistics

CNNIC has conducted, and continues to conduct, surveys of Internet information resources. CNNIC maintains

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

on topics such as Internet bandwidth in China, Domain Name registrations, and Internet Development in China.

International liaison and policy research

As the national Network Information Center (NIC), CNNIC maintains cooperative relationships with other International Internet Communities, and works closely with NICs of other countries.

Secretariat of the Internet Policy and Resource Committee, Internet Society of China (ISC)

CNNIC serves as the Secretariat of the

Internet Society of China The Internet Society of China (ISC) is a Chinese non-governmental organization made up of 140 members of the Chinese Internet industry including private companies, schools and research institutes. It is supported by Chinese government authorities s ...

’s Internet Policy and Resource Committee. The Policy and Resource committee is in charge of tasks such as providing policy and legislation oriented suggestions to promote the growth of China’s internet, facilitating the development and application of Internet resources and relevant technologies, and actively participating in the research work of domestic Internet development and administration policies.

Secretariat of the Anti-Phishing Alliance of China (APAC)

In July 2008, a broad alliance of Chinese online commerce stakeholders, including CNNIC, all major Chinese commercial banks and web hosting companies, founded the Anti-Phishing Alliance of China (APAC) in order to tackle phishing activities that abuse .cn sub-domain names. CNNIC also functions as the secretariat of APAC.

Certificate issuance violations

In 2015,

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

discovered that CNNIC had issued an intermediate CA certificate to an Egypt-based firm that used CNNIC's keys to impersonate Google domains. Google responded by removing CNNIC's root certificate from the certificate store in

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, an ...

and all of Google's products. As one of the parties involved in the incident, Google stating that Mozilla responded to the incident, stating that

References

External links

* {{WebManTools Domain name registries Government agencies established in 1997 Communications authorities Internet in China 1997 establishments in China Organizations based in Beijing Zhongguancun Regulation in China 1997 in Beijing Ministry of Industry and Information Technology