Historical background of DENIC

Historical background of DENIC eG

DENIC's history did not begin in the banking metropolis of Frankfurt, but rather in Dortmund. At the end of the eighties, a name server service was created by the Informatikrechner-Betriebsgruppe (IRB) of Dortmund university 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 computer addresses were entered into a list, which became increasingly larger. It was soon apparent that this volunteer 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. 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, more than 110 people handle the over twelve 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. At the same time, progress has also been made on expanding and enhancing infrastructure. For nearly all its services, DENIC now has complete hardware redundancy.

Milestones

December 1996	Founding of DENIC as a Cooperative. Meanwhile, the Internet association IV-DENIC has 36 members.
July 1997	Business operation starts at the new headquarters in Frankfurt. Technical operations still remain in Karlsruhe.
April 1998	Concentration of all of DENIC's activities in Frankfurt.
October 1999	1 million .de domains registered.
July 2000	The number of DENIC members has reached 100.
November 2001	5 million .de domains registered.
September 2002	Start of the ENUM trial operation for the German telephone number space under .9.4.e164.arpa.
December 2002	6 million .de domains registered.
November 2003	The number of DENIC members has reached 200.
January 2004	7 million .de domains registered.
January 2004	Together with the Internet association eco, DENIC sponsors the first root server in Germany, an exact copy of the K-root server in London, operated by RIPE NCC.
March 2004	DENIC starts to register IDNs containing umlauts and accents.
October 2004	More than 8 million .de domains registered.
August 2005	9 million .de domains registered.
January 2006	Start of the productive phase of ENUM.
June 2006	10 million .de domains registered.
July 2007	Registration of the 11.111.111th .de domain.
April 2008	12 million .de domains registered.