Internet & Cooperative – A Successful Combination
The internet is created by many for many. It is a joint effort, which has become an integral part of our lives. DENIC eG has a key role in this undertaking: The Cooperative administers all domains with the ending .de and provides the technical infrastructure that makes it possible to access any .de domain at any time from any place in the world.
The DENIC Cooperative was officially launched in December 1996 by 37 founding members. Their credo was that of Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen, the initiator of the cooperative concept: "What one person cannot achieve alone, many can". From the very beginning, they considered the management of the .de domains and the provision of the necessary infrastructure a task to be tackled jointly. Self-responsibility and self-governance have been core principles of DENIC's cooperative work ever since, and there is a touch of Raiffeisen spirit in every .de domain.
Today, the private not-for-profit Cooperative with a membership of roughly 300 internet companies represents more than 17.5 million .de domains. More than a quarter of these members is based outside Germany, bringing international aspects and perspectives to the DENIC community and spreading the cooperative idea throughout the world.
Building consensus on a broad basis through co-determination on an equal footing is our Cooperative's recipe for success. The General Assembly as the Cooperative's supreme statutory body makes its decisions in keeping with the principle of equality, which ensures that a wide variety of viewpoints are taken into account in the decision process. The cooperative model has proven a guarantor of future-proof decisions in a rapidly changing and highly innovative technological environment.
What started in the mid-19th century with Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen as an agricultural purchasing group has become a model of success for many of today's companies in multiple sectors. Thanks to the numerous actors who are committed to a free and open internet, it also fits in perfectly with the virtual world.
Our Mission & Engagement
Responsibility for the Internet Community
We work in keeping with the principles of RFC1591, in which the requirements for the administration and operation of ccTLDs are defined:
- We have a duty to serve the Internet community.
- We are able to carry out the necessary responsibilities, and have the ability to do an equitable, just, honest and competent job.
- Our legitimation is based on our being rooted in and recognised by the local Internet community.
The global medium Internet is developing at breath-taking pace – and we are a driving force.
Tom Keller
(Member of DENIC's Executive Board)
As the central registry for .de domains, we fulfil our tasks as a not-for-profit organisation, for the benefit of the entire Internet community. Our fundamental principles are impartiality, independence, technical expertise, responsibility and non-discrimination.
The fundamental principles of our Cooperative are laid down in our Statutes.
A High-Performance Internet Open to All - This Is Our Mission
DENIC is a cooperative; this means we are neutral and feel committed to the entire Internet community. We actively participate in national and international coordination and standardisation bodies and are a member of various Internet associations. Moreover, we support the further evolution of the Internet by sponsoring dedicated projects and events.
Events Sponsored or Hosted by DENIC
We actively support information exchange panels that are designed to bring together the various stakeholder groups to jointly contribute to shaping the Internet of the future – both on the technical and on the organisational-political level.
- Domain pulse
- European Summer School on Internet Governance (Euro-SSIG)
- European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG)
Agile Work Methodologies
DENIC relies on agile methodologies, such as Scrum and Kanban. To support the advancement and propagation of such dynamic working methods, we are sponsoring selected specialist conferences of the agile community.
Projects Sponsored by DENIC
We are committed to a high-performance Internet. To enhance the Internet's efficiency, we sponsor dedicated projects like the K-root server mirror, which is operated in Frankfurt am Main together with DE-CIX.
Shaping the Internet on Platforms of the IT Industry - We Are Involved
We want to have a say in national and international developments. Thus, we collaborate with a range of organisations and associations and are an official member in quite a few of them:
ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
ICANN is a non-profit organisation founded in 1998 with headquarters in California. It is responsible for the global technical coordination of the Internet, in particular for protocols and addresses, and for the supervision of the generic Top Level Domains. DENIC has participated in the ICANN Working Groups since the very beginning to represent the interests of the German Internet community. www.icann.org
CENTR – Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries
The members of CENTR are predominantly European country code TLD registries. CENTR sees itself as a forum for international discussion of questions and concerns related to domain registration. The primary goal is the exchange of ideas and information among the ccTLD registries. Staff members of DENIC are actively involved in all areas of CENTR, including administration, technology, law and marketing. www.centr.org
IETF – Internet Engineering Task Force
The IETF is responsible for standardisation of the Internet. It is an open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the technical processes essential for communication on the Internet (protocols) and the Internet architecture. We are strongly involved in the IETF Working Groups that deal with the Domain Name System in a direct or indirect way. www.ietf.org
RIPE – Réseaux IP Européens und RIPE Network Coordination Centre (NCC)
RIPE – Réseaux IP Européens und RIPE Network Coordination Centre (NCC) Founded in 1989 and organised as an open community, RIPE brings together the public and private operators of the European Internet infrastructure. We are involved in the RIPE Working Groups relevant to ccTLD matters. Moreover, we are a member of RIPE NCC, which is responsible for the management of IP addresses in Europe. www.ripe.net
OARC – Operations, Analysis, and Research Center for the DNS
OARC is a trusted platform for the operators of the DNS infrastructure to share information and data. Creating a global network of Internet specialists, OARC ensures that incidents having an impact on the operation of the Internet are investigated to learn from them in order to enhance stability and security of the DNS infrastructure. www.dns-oarc.net
ISOC – Internet Society
The Internet Society was originally founded as the umbrella organisation of IETF. In line with its motto "The Internet is for everyone", today's focal action fields of ISOC are global networking, access to the Internet, the propagation of innovations like IPv6 and DNSSEC as well as data privacy and governance. Moreover, it represents the technical community on the international political stage in forums like the IGF. www.isoc.org
IGF – Internet Governance Forum
The IGF was formally established in 2006 by the United Nations. Since then, it has been bringing together once a year people from all stakeholder groups (government representatives, international organisations, the private sector and civil society) to discuss issues of public interest relating to the future structure of Internet governance. www.intgovforum.org
ISOC.DE – Internet Society German Chapter (ISOC.DE e.V.)
The German branch of the Internet Society emerged from the interest group Deutsche Interessengemeinschaft Internet (DIGI e.V.). The goal of ISOC is an open, trend-setting development and utilisation of the Internet. DENIC is actively involved at ISOC in both national and international bodies. www.isoc.de
BITKOM – Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media
BITKOM represents a wide range of companies including producers of end device or infrastructure systems as well as providers of software, Internet services, new media and content. It is one of BITKOM's primary goals to support Germany on its way to turning into an information society. www.bitkom.org
CERT-Verbund – Computer Emergency Response Teams
The CERT Association is a forum of incident response and security teams. In this forum, CERT teams from the industry, the research sector and governmental institutions on federal and state level work together to ensure security of German computer systems. www.cert-verbund.de
