DENIC as an self-contained institution celebrates anniversary

From one thousand to seven millions in ten years: this is the figure which marks the performance of DENIC on the area of domains. On 1 January 1994, DENIC started in an institutionaslised form as a project financed from third-party funds at the University of Karlsruhe. This was the beginnung of a story of success, which is documented not only by the fact, that .de is the second most used Top Level Domain in the world following .com. Also concerning technical matters, DENIC get something going the last ten years. At the same time, intensive progress has also been made on expanding and enhancing infrastructure. For nearly all its services, DENIC now has complete hardware redundancy. Since December 2003, all .de-nameserver are run by DENIC itself, too.

DENIC does its important job of domain administration for .de without the intention of making profit, for the benefit and well-being of the German Internet Community. DENIC's whole work is impartial, independent, informed, responsible and non-discriminating and in conformity with the internationally recognized standards for running a domain registry. Thanks to its expertise, DENIC has in recent years gained much trust and respect not only in Germany but internationally as well.

DENIC's history did not begin at its nowadays seat in the banking metropolis of Frankfurt, but rather in Dortmund. And the starting points lies longer ahead than just ten years. In November 1986 the the stage was set for using .de-domains by includimg .de in the zone-files of the Internet root servers for the frist time. Then, in 1991, a name server service was created by the Informatikrechner-Betriebsgruppe (IRB) of the University of Dortmund for the German Internet community, which at that time was still quite small. In international usage, such a service is known as a Network Information Center, abbreviated NIC: the name DENIC was born. Because one has decided internationally to use the two-letter-abbrevations of ISO 3166-1 list for the description of the coutry code Top Level Domains. The code for Germany is DE.

At first, the administration of domains was carried out relatively informally. The names and associated com-puter addresses were entered into a list, which became increasingly larger. It was soon apparent that this vol-unteer driven system must be based on a larger, more extensive foundation. In August of 1993, this foundation was established through the initiative of the then three German Internet Service Providers, the "Interessenverbund Deutsches Network Information Center (IV-DENIC)" to put out to tender the operation of the nationwide name server service. The University of Karlsruhe prevailed with its proposal, and in January of 1994 it took over the administration and registration of the .de domains for an initial period of three years. Thus, DENIC moved over from a voluntary service to an instituition of its own. Involved from the beginning was Sabine Dolderer, who is now as member of the DENIC board still in charge for domain administration in Germany. At that time, the number of domains was approximately 1,000. By mid 1996, the number had climbed to 20,000. The number of providers and Internet users also continued to increase. It was once again time for reorganisation.

In December of 1996, the assembly of the IV DENIC, which consisted of 36 German Internet Service Providers, decided to found a cooperative society to administrate the German domains and provide the necessary infrastructure. This was the birth of DENIC eG. In July of 1997, the DENIC headquarters were established in Frankfurt, while the technical operations remained in Karlsruhe for the time being. In January of 1999, all activities were concentrated in Frankfurt.

The rapid growth of the Internet as a mass medium is documented not only by the number of registered domains, but also by the number of DENIC associates. When things began in Karlsruhe, there were only two employees. Now, 76 people handle the seven million domains and make certain that the domain database, the name server for the .de domains and additional DENIC services are operational round the clock.

DENIC is in permanent contact with other national and international bodies, organizations and associations who are concerned with the Internet and maintains an active dialogue with representatives of the Internet Community. On questions regarding registration policy DENIC's decision-making bodies are assisted by a Legal Advisory Council, which is comprised of representatives of trade associations, academics and legal specialists as well as observers from the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour and the German Federal Ministry of Justice.

The history of domain administration in Germany, which is DENIC's history too, has been a resounding success story. Within only a few years, more than six million domains have been registered and a stable, highly dependable infrastructure set up. In future, DENIC will maintain its close cooperation with its members as it continues to strive to fulfil its duties towards the German Internet Community.