DENIC

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  • Jörg Schweiger (CEO)
  • Helga Krüger
  • Carsten Schiefner
  • Thomas Keller (Chairman)

DENIC (short for Deutsches Network Information Center ) is a registered cooperative with headquarters in Frankfurt am Main. Its duties are the operation and management of the top -level domain. De and all associated activities. In addition, it has built the first root name server in Germany in cooperation with the DE- CIX 2004.

History

After the introduction of. De November 5, 1986, the top-level domain was initially managed by the University of Dortmund. This was followed from 1994, the University of Karlsruhe, which maintained a contract with the so-called interest group Deutsches Network Information Center (IV- DENIC ). Inside were nearly two dozen German Internet Service Provider together. Due to the increasing demand for. De domains has already established a cooperative in December 1996 to provide a reliable regulatory framework for the operation of the German top -level domain. Unlike other organizations, net, for example, Verisign for. Com and. , DENIC has been designed from the outset as a charitable organization.

After setting up an office in Frankfurt am Main and July 1997, DENIC gradually took over all the tasks associated with. En. This includes in particular the relocation of the name servers from Karlsruhe to Frankfurt in August 1998. Official adoption of the top -level domain by DENIC then took place on 1 January 1999, in October of the year the one millionth. Registered a domain. Within two years the number of. De domains increased from one to five million with now more than 150 members. The growth leveled off in the following years, but leveled off at a relatively stable level of an average of one million per year.

2002 DENIC begannt with the introduction of ENUM technology, can be imaged with the phone numbers to domains. In May of the year of test operation for the address zone 9.4.e164.arpa, which was previously approved by the ITU- office for technical standardization began. Due to the legal uncertainties DENIC closed in August 2003 a contract with the Regulatory Authority for Telecommunications and Post, to give a correct frame to the introduction of ENUM. The trial itself was completed in the fall of 2005.

Also in 2005, undertook the DENIC a step towards greater internationalization: The cooperative announced to apply for net, which was previously managed by Verisign and re-bid. . At the General Assembly in November 2005, a majority of the members for an application for the generic top -level domain, even if the confidentiality of the process was criticized. However, DENIC could not ultimately prevail: In an evaluation of ICANN, the cooperative landed only on the fourth of five seats. For example, the proposed locations for the. Net name servers have been judged negatively.

In April 2007, Sabine DOL joined the Executive Board of DENIC back surprisingly, after they had led the association for several years. The basic time differences over the future direction of the DENIC were called. Consequently, also placed two members of the Supervisory down its mandate, after which DOL has held their original positions again in September of the same year. On September 23, 2013 DOL announced their final withdrawal from the executive suite DENIC.

Significant for the history of DENIC was also a ruling in April 2008: The Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main decided, the cooperative must Volkswagen permit the registration of the domain vw.de, even if the guidelines of the DENIC actually presuppose at least three characters. After a re-edition of the proceedings was rejected before the Federal Court, DENIC was forced to open the award of two -digit domains for everyone. This was done with effect from October 23, 2009, also pure numeric domains were first admitted.

Locations

2007, the office operation and the data center DENIC were spatially separated. The latter was opened in September 2007 on a new site that has a direct connection to the node DE- CIX. At this time, eleven million. De domains registered that could be transmitted without interference in the new data center. To ensure fail-safe operation, a mirror in Amsterdam was built until 2008 as well, which can serve as a replacement for the German data center in case of problems. Amsterdam was chosen by his own admission as a location because it is far enough away to survive disasters in Frankfurt am Main, yet close enough for easy access by technicians DENIC.

DENIC itself has worldwide 17 name servers at offices in Frankfurt am Main ( 2) Amsterdam ( 2 ), Berlin, Beijing, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Paris, Redwood City, São Paulo, Stockholm, Ulm, Moscow and Vienna.

Members

In theory, any company can become a member of DENIC, the. De domains register or would thus provide related services. Prerequisite for inclusion in the cooperative is simply that an interested party to any other Member is economically linked and exist over the financial stability of any doubts.

DENIC has more than 280 members. Among these are virtually all major national and international Internet service providers, such as the German Telekom, United Internet, Strato, Vodafone Germany, Verizon Germany or Key-Systems.

Criticism

DENIC has repeatedly been accused of lack of transparency in their decisions - even from among the members of the cooperative. The criticism culminated in July 2005 in the form of an extraordinary general meeting in which the then incumbent board should be deselected. Such claims were rejected by the majority, however, the members approved an amendment to the Statute regarding the composition of the Management Board. Also volunteer board members have since been directly elected by the General Assembly.

A lack of information policy was the so-called NASA project reason for criticism (net Application and Strategic Alternatives. ): . Though 2005, a majority of the members for the bid to net agreed that DENIC giving the crucial details of their application not to the public. The reason was called, among other things, that the competitor Verisign - himself a member of DENIC - thereby possibly an advantage might have been. Only after massive pressure towards DENIC was in February 2005, further details are known.

In 2010, the DENIC was criticized after several million. De domains were unreachable. Reason was a technical glitch in the operation of the name server of the awarding authority, so that they had received an incomplete zone file. For a large part of all. De domains was reported in the call, the corresponding address is not registered. DENIC could correct the error only after two hours, the reluctance of the communication failure was urged.

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