General FAQ

 DENIC is a cooperative and its full name is “DENIC Domain Verwaltungs- und Betriebsgesellschaft eG”. It is the registry for the domains below the Top Level Domain .de, i.e. it administers all domains that end in .de. Additionally, DENIC is the registry for all ENUM-domains which cover the German telephone number space.

The domain administration is an operation requiring the most sophisticated technology. Its most essential components are the provision of an automatic electronic registration system and the operation of the domain database and the name-server service for the .de zone and the German ENUM zone. DENIC's database thus contains information about which domains have already been registered, who the domain holder is and, by no means least important, on which computer the services associated with the domain are to be found. The most important data about the domain and its holder as well as its other administrative and/or technical contacts are publicly accessible through a function known as the whois query. The information on the computer addresses belonging to each of the .de domains is held on so-called name servers and made available round the clock worldwide on the Internet. That is a precondition for services such as e-mail and homepages to be reached and used from everywhere in the world. The same applies for the ENUM domains.

The acronym DENIC is derived from the German for “German Network Information Centre” (i.e. DEutsches Network Information Center). DENIC has the legal form of a cooperative (that's what the letters “eG” after its name mean). It was set up in 1997 and it has its headquarters in Frankfurt am Main. DENIC membership is open to anyone who administers domains under .de for others and who satisfies a number of other conditions. DENIC works on a non-profit basis and accomplishes its tasks in accordance with the internationally recognized guidelines for domain administration for the benefit of the whole German Internet Community.

 Domains are an addressing technique for identifying and localizing computers (or "hosts") in the Internet. Computers recognize one another solely by means of their IP addresses, which are purely numerical. The IPv4 standard, which is still the dominant one, requires them to be in the form xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, where each xxx stands for a number between 0 and 255. A typical IP address might, for instance, be 10.136.66.12. When one computer wants to communicate with another one via the Internet, it sends it "Internet packets" which are addressed to the recipient's IP address.

It is human nature that we usually find it a lot easier to memorize terms and descriptions than rows of figures. That was the reason the Domain Name System (DNS) was developed and it makes it possible to use words, names and terms instead of digits more or less at will (although a few rules have to be complied with). That now makes it possible for Internet users to access hosts either through their IP address or by entering the domain. The DNS can also be used for calling other services and information.

When a domain is called in the Internet, special computers, known as name servers, assume the task of translating it into the corresponding IP address. Because each domain and each IP address is unique, they can both only be registered once in the world.

The DNS itself has a hierarchical structure. A number of Top Level Domains (TLDs), such as .de or .com, are defined as its topmost layer. Under these TLDs, it is possible to register second-level domains, which are nearly always referred to simply as "domains". DENIC administers those domains that come under the Top Level Domain .de.

 The Top Level Domains (TLDs) are the highest hierarchical level in the international Domain Name System (DNS). They are found at the end of the Domain, to the right of the last dot. We make a distinction between general or generic TLDs (gTLDs), such as .com, .net and .org, and country code TLDs (ccTLDs), such as .de (Germany) or .ch (Switzerland).

Currently, there are 15 gTLDs. Domains for some of them can be registered by anybody, whereas for others, such as .gov, .int, .aero or .museum, registration is reserved for particular user groups (in the four cases listed: the US government, international organisations, companies and institutions concerned with aviation, and museums). The coordination of the gTLDs is in the hands of the international organization ICANN.

The individual ccTLDs are administered by so-called Network Information Centers (NICs). For Germany, that is DENIC. A list of all the existing domain endings and the registries that administer them can be found on IANA's website.

 A general distinction is made between generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs), such as .com, or .info, and country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs), such as .de.

 You will find information about the gTLDs on the website of the international organization ICANN.

The website of IANA gives you an overview of the more than 240 ccTLDs that exist today. Here, you also find a list of the names and addresses of the registries in charge of each ccTLD.

Many registries make information about domains and domain holders publicly available through a so-called whois search. For many of the gTLDs, you can use the whois search offered by Internic. If this is not possible, please contact the particular registry in charge of the TLD you are interested in to get further information.

 The European Commission decided, as a means of encouraging e-business in Europe and to support the creation of a own European Internet identity, to establish the Top Level Domain .eu. The organization EURid, which was set up jointly by the national registries for .be, .se and .it, has been chosen as the .eu registry.

 No. DENIC is only responsible for the registration of domains under the Top Level Domain (TLD) .de (for Germany). The second-level domain "beispieldomain.de.vu" has nothing to do with the Top Level Domain .de, but is a domain under the county code TLD .vu (which stands for Vanuatu). DENIC has nothing at all to do with the registration of this domain.

 There are several possible explanations for this phenomenon:

When a domain is registered with DENIC, it is immediately visible via our whois service, so it is then possible to access certain data about the domain, in particular, the name of its holder. At the same time, technical data is added to the DENIC database regarding the domain's connectivity. Providing connectivity data involves indicating between two and five name servers through which the domain information is available or arranging for at least one direct entry (NSentry) to be made on the DENIC name server.

Once a domain has been fully connected, it is possible to use it to process various services (www, e-mail, ftp, etc.), but it is not mandatory to do so. What this means is that although "de-beispieldomain.de" has been registered, there doesn't have to be a host called "www.de-beispieldomain.de". There are no rules that lay down which services must be provided through a domain, and certainly there is no obligation whatsoever to create a homepage. It is possible for domain holders to decide to use their domains solely for the functions of transmitting e-mail or for file transfers using ftp. The use a domain (in whatever way) at any given point in time cannot be verified either technically or administratively. There would thus be no point in making the effective use of a domain into a precondition for its registration.

Another possibility is that the elusive domain does have its associated homepage, but that its server istemporarily inaccessible.

There is also the possibility that you have made a mistake in entering the URL.

It might be that the domain data has changed since last you accessed it (which will already be documented in our whois database), but that DENIC has not yet generated a new .de zone with the latest information.

In no circumstances does the inaccessibility of a website bestow any sort of right on you to demand its deletion. You can't call for the deletion of any website producing a message such as "under construction" either.

 If you want to be able to make use of DENIC's services directly, you will have to become a member of the DENIC cooperative. An up-to-date list of all our members is to be found on our website. DENIC would be very pleased indeed if you wanted to become a member. Such a decision would prove that you, too, were willing to take a share in the responsibility for forming and further developing the Internet in Germany. Here are the conditions that you will have to fulfil before you will be admitted as a DENIC member: You must administer domains under the Top Level Domain .de; you must not have any form of economic ties with any existing DENIC member; and you must submit evidence of your sustainable financial stability and your technical competence in domain administration. If you satisfy these conditions, you can apply for membership, which you must do in writing. DENIC's Executive Board will decide on whether to admit you or not. You will find details in the “Membership” section of our website.

 The answer to this question depends on whether your domain is being administered by a DENIC member or by DENICdirect.

In the first case (your domain is being administered by a DENIC member), it is only your provider who is in a position to deal with questions and any other matters concerning your domain. If, despite that, you contact DENIC directly, there is nothing we can do except pass your message on to the DENIC member in charge, so there is no way that you can save time. If it happens that you can no longer contact your provider or if you make no progress with your provider, DENIC is able to give you provisional assistance until you find a new provider.

In the second case (your domain is being administered by DENICdirect), you can contact DENIC directly with any matter that may concern you. As a DENICdirect customer, you should realize that you can help shorten the processing time considerably and reduce the need for clarifying details afterwards by using the special standard forms that DENIC provides for many different types of transaction.

 A classical IP address is made up of four bytes (as defined in Internet Protocol Version 4 - “IPv4” for short). Generally, Internet addresses are written in such a way that each byte is represented by a decimal number and the bytes are separated from one another by dots (example: 192.168.4.13).

This system was first introduced in the 1980s. Theoretically, it has a capacity of around 4 000 000 000 IP addresses.

In practice, however, the vast majority of these addresses are not available for use on account of groupings and other mechanisms, so that, as the Internet continued its rapid expansion, it became necessary to think about extending this address scheme. These addresses, which are only 32-bits long are beginning to run out, and new ranges of functions that ought to be integrated are creating the need for additional address space.

For this reason, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) developed a new version of the Internet Protocol (IPv6), and in 1998 it was given the status of a draft standard [RFC2460]. According to this newer model there are no longer just four bytes available for each IP address, but 16. This increases the total number of addresses to 2^128 (aprroimately 3.4 E+38).

DENIC's whois service on port 43 is fully compliant to RFC3912. In order to provide support for our internationalized database (for instance, with contact data or IDNs), characters beyond ASCII are delivered in UTF-8 encoding by default. The reason for choosing UTF-8 is its backwards compatibility to ASCII in the first place. Further, it is the preferred encoding for IETF protocols according to RFC2277. Support for Unicode, UTF-8 and its other transformation formats is widespread in all modern software and operating systems.

Certainly, the whois protocol does not support any internationalization features. DENIC has implemented some proprietary extensions of the protocol, which allow existing whois clients to specify the character set to be used in the wire for queries and answers (available encodings besides US-ASCII are ISO-8859-1 -also known as Latin-1, very popular in Western Europe-, UTF-8 and UTF-16). Use of these extensions is, however, optional.

Ultimately, the solution for a fully internationalized information service - among many other advantages - is the use of IRIS (Internet Registry Information Service, RFC3981). DENIC is working on an implementation of this protocol.

 No. DENIC's job is just to administer domains, not IP addresses. The latter function has been entrusted to RIPE NCC in Amsterdam for the European space.

If you need IP addresses for access to the Internet, you will generally be able to get them from your Internet Service Provider (ISP), provided he/she belongs to RIPE's Local Internet Registries(LIRs).

It you don't want to connect up to the Internet, it will presumably be possible for you to work with a so-called "private address space". This concept is described in detail in RFC1918 (Address Allocation for Private Internets).

 Currently, administration of the IP address space worldwide is divided up over five different organizations: RIPE NCC, AfriNIC, ARIN, APNIC and LACNIC. . It is RIPE NCC in Amsterdam that is in charge of the European space.

RIPE NCC assigns big address blocks to its members, the Local Internet Registries (LIRs), and these, in turn, make addresses available to the users in their particular regions.

 Currently the IP address space is being administered by different organizations around the world: RIPE NCC, ARIN, APNIC, AFRINIC and LAPNIC. RIPE NCC is responsible for the European space. You can find out the identity of the owner and/or the administrative contact (admin-c) of the network concerned by using the whois query at RIPE NCC (whois -h whois.ripe.net <IP-address>).

If that does not lead to a result, then it follows that the network you are looking for is not being administered by RIPE NCC, but by ARIN, APNIC, AFRINIC or LAPNIC.

The whois hosts of these three organizations are:
 whois.arin.net
 whois.lacnic.net
 whois.apnic.net
 whois.afrinic.net

IANA's website includes a list of which IP blocks have been assigned to whom. In many cases that will already tell you which of the above-mentioned organizations you will need to contact. To give an example, addresses starting with 193, 194 or 195 belong to the zone administered by RIPE NCC. There are, however, other IP addresses, such as those starting with a number between 128 and 172 where it is unfortunately not so easy to establish their assignment, since they have been divided into part blocks and assigned to various RIRs. Alternatively, you can access the whois database via a web interface:
 RIPE NCC Whois http://www.ripe.net/perl/whois
 ARIN Whois: http://www.arin.net/tools/whois_help.html
 LACNIC Whois: http://lacnic.net/cgi-bin/lacnic/whois
 APNIC Whois: http://www.apnic.net/apnic-bin/whois.pl
 AFRINIC Whois: http://www.afrinic.net/cgi-bin/whois

 The registration of a .de domain can be arranged through any provider who is either a DENIC member themselves or who works with a DENIC member. The usual practice is that registration will be offered to you as part of the package of planning your Internet presence or that it will be an automatic part of an Internet-access package.

Once you have decided in favour of a particular provider, you can also apply to register your domain directly through them. We would ask you to understand that we are unable to give any prices for the registration of .de domains in cases like this since, each provider decides themselves what to charge.

If you don't want to have your domain registration undertaken by a provider, you have the alternative of entrusting it to our DENICdirect service. We will then charge our services to you in accordance with the most recent DENIC price list. In arriving at your decision, please consider that we will not provide you with any additional Internet services, such as web space or e-mail accounts. These are services that you will then have to organize yourself or order from a provider. For these reasons, most domain holders prefer to have registration handled by a provider.

Regardless of the route by which you arrange to have your domain registered, a contractual relationship is created between you as the domain holder and DENIC as the registry. To conclude the contract, it is necessary that the registration is in compliance with the conditions stipulated in DENIC's Domain Guidelines. The contractual provisions are summarized in DENIC's DomainTerms and Conditions.

To improve our services the whois servers will be equiped with a local database for status enquiries. The local databases receive the domain data from the registry database which leads to a short delay. As soon as the status of a domain is based on data older than five minutes an aditional line will be delivered. Please note that this is not the case when you use the web-whois.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Domain: denic.de
 Status: connect
 
 % DB time is <JJJJ-MM-TT> T<HH:MM:SS> +02:00
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The output of the line "DB time" will only occure with status queries when the data is older than five minutes. Otherwise the line will be omitted.

 There are two ways of ensuring a domain's connectivity:

The first of these is for the domain to be delegated by DENIC name servers to other name servers. This means that DENIC enters the addresses of at least two name servers in its databases. Any inquiry DENIC receives about this domain is passed on to these name servers. In order to ensure that the name servers concerned are accessible and competent, we perform a check of functionality the first time entries are made for them.

Secondly, there is the alternative of linking up to five services on DENIC's own name servers that have something to do with your domain, such as www.de-beispieldomain.de or mail.de-beispieldomain.de, directly with the IP address of the host or a mail server through which this service is handled (such links are known as “NSentries”). In this second case, you do not need to have a name server of your own.

You may use  to query .de and .9.4.e164.arpa domains and also any other domain under any NAST Top Level Domain. Please note, however, that for all domains under other TLDs (such as .com or .net domains) a generic test series will be performed, which does not take any TLD-specific settings into consideration. Hence, tests performed with the same name servers with identical configurations, for a .de and a .com domain for example, may lead to different results.

In case you do not know the requirements for the respective TLD, please contact the authoritative registry. You may consult the website of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority to find out this registry.

 Fundamentally, holding a domain is inheritable, so the heir of the late domain holder replaces the deceased person. Such an heir will need to show evidence of the inheritance to his/her provider or DENIC and will then be entered in DENIC's database as the new domain holder. The heir, of course, also has the right to delete the domain or to transfer it to someone else.

It is different with the function of administrative contact (admin-c). This is not an asset as such and can hence not be inherited. If the admin-c dies, the domain holder has to appoint a new one. The same applies, of course, to the technical contact (tech-c).

 MRI is the abbeviation of Mail Registry Interface and is an interface with which DENIC-members can send requests to the registration system via e-mail.