About Us

DENIC's Tasks and Responsibilities at a Glance

Even though the organizational forms of the various ccTLDs differ to a certain extent, they all base their work on the principal standardization document for “DomainName System Structure and Delegation” issued in 1994, RFC1591.

This document states a number of fundamental requirements to be met in the administration and operation of a ccTLD:

• It has the duty to serve the Internet Community,
• It must have the structural, organizational and technical capacities to carry out the necessary responsibilities and have the ability to do an equitable, just, honest, and competent job, and
• It legitimates its function by being thoroughly based on and widely recognized by the local Internet Community.

In Germany, DENIC operates .de according to these principles. It runs its business as a not-for-profit company, for the use and benefit of the whole German Internet Community, and provides its services in a neutral and independent, competent, responsible, non-discriminating way, acting in accordance with the internationally recognized standards for domain registries.

DENIC's Competence in Technical Matters

DENIC operates an automated registration system, where its members can register and administer .de and German ENUM domains (under .9.4.e.164.arpa) via a real-time and a mail interface. The registration system handles about two million transactions every month (new registrations, updates or deletions of domain data). These orders and requests are transmitted to a central domain database, in which all domain data are stored. From that domain database, technical information is generated and regularly distributed to the authoritative name servers for .de domains. DENIC operates a worldwide network of name server clusters (logically structured in 2 anycast clouds) for .de and .9.4.e164.arpa.

Although they are focused on the German and European core market as far as the name servers' geographical distribution is concerned, they also cover North and South America as well as Asia and Pacific. Redundant accessibility of the name servers is guaranteed from the IPv4 as well as from the IPv6 network. This makes DENIC the center of competence and operation for DNS in Germany or, in other words, for .de.

Besides the technical infrastructure, DENIC also offers the domain holders and the Internet Community various other services. These include the provision of information services like whois, support by placing DISPUTE entries, the DENICdirect services, execution of a domain TRANSIT procedure, and also training and advice
for the members. Moreover, there are the DENIC webpages, which contain comprehensive information and numerous auxiliary tools dealing with all aspects of domain matters.

Security and Redundancy

In addition to these aspects, safety plays an important role in domain administration, since the services must be available all around the clock. To maintain this availability even in the event of an unexpected temporary failure of a single server, DENIC pays particular attention to redundancy at all levels. For this reason, we operate two data centers which are independent of each other. All relevant services are implemented both in our data center in Frankfurt and in the backup data center which is operated in Amsterdam. A storage area network (SAN) ensures that the corresponding data is available at both data centers, which are linked by a number of dedicated lines. An additional multi-stage firewall provides a protective barrier between all externally accessible services and DENIC's internal network, where the actual processing and storage of data takes place.

Permanent monitoring of the availability of the services is a further key element in DENIC's security concept: During business hours, the ongoing operation is monitored by employees of our IT Services Department. At all other times, a standby service is always ready to move into action. All relevant services are also subject to continuous monitoring by automatic software tools. Trend analyses, runtime monitoring and the correlating observation of various technical metrics ensure adequate performance and stability also in the future.

International Cooperation

Through its cooperation with international bodies (e.g. ICANN, CENTR, IETF, RIPE), DENIC is also heavily involved in determining the future of the Internet. In doing so, it represents the interests of its members as well as of the whole GermanInternet Community. 

Moreover, DENIC supports the German Internet users and enhances the efficiency of the Internet by participating in numerous projects that deal with the provision of central components in the Net. One example is the sponsoring of the K-root server mirror, which is operated in Frankfurt together with DE-CIX. Another is the participation in the AS112 project, which aims at reducing the load put on the root servers due to requests for addresses located in private networks. And last but not least, there is the Secondary Name Service for other Top Level Domains. On its servers, DENIC operates secondaries for the zone data of .at, .pr, .il, .cat, .fo, .aero, .lu and .na, and in its data centers rack space is at disposal for servers of .at, .br, .gr, .kr and .cn.

Future Prospects

The Internet has already been developing at a breathtaking pace; nevertheless its potential is still far from being exhausted. To keep fully up to date as regards innovations in the international context, we rely on the skills and qualifications of our employees, who participate regularly in conferences and international meetings. DENIC will continue to be actively engaged in developing and standardizing basic technologies. Furthermore, we are seeking to open up new fields of business, as long as these arise from DENIC's core business and have the potential to lastingly enhance our technical competence and strengthen our economic standing.