DENIC eG

About DENIC

DENIC eG, based in Frankfurt am Main, is the central registry for all .de domains and ensures that every .de domain is reachable worldwide within fractions of a second. With more than 17 million registered domains, .de is one of the largest top-level domains worldwide. The cooperative, founded in 1996 by 37 Internet Service Providers, today unites around 300 members and operates on a non-profit basis. Its core tasks include managing the central domain registry, operating a worldwide nameserver network with 24 locations on six continents, the whois service, and operating two independent, highly secure data centers for redundancy across billions of daily queries. The wholly owned subsidiary DENIC Services GmbH & Co. KG in Darmstadt offers Data Escrow, Digital Escrow and Anycast-DNS for registries and registrars and serves over 2,600 escrow customers worldwide. Since 2006, DENIC has also managed the ENUM domains for the German numbering range (+49).

Site

Frankfurt am Main

Processes

Registration and management of .de domains, Management of ENUM domains (.9.4.e164.arpa), whois service (domain query), DENICdirect (domain management without a provider), TRANSIT service, DISPUTE proceedings, DNSSEC, IDN domains

Certificates

ISO/IEC 27001:2022, ISO 22301:2020

Founded

1996

Industries

Internet infrastructure, Domain registry, IT security, Hosting/provider, Hosting/provider (via members)

1. 01

   Domain registration via DENIC members (providers/registrars)

2. 02

   Verification and management of holder data in the central domain registry

3. 03

   Registration, updating and deletion via the

4. 04

   Operation of the global anycast nameserver network for reachability

5. 05

   Secured by DNSSEC, .de Registry Lock and 24/7 monitoring

6. 06

   Additional services: Data Escrow, Digital Escrow and Anycast-DNS via DENIC

Locations

Inside the production

Quality & Certification

DENIC operates according to a certified management system in accordance with ISO/IEC 27001:2022 (information security) and ISO 22301:2020 (business continuity). Systems are monitored 24/7 to guarantee continuous availability for billions of daily queries.

History

1. 1986

   Entry of the country code .de in the IANA database on 5 November; initially administered by CSNET in the USA

2. 1988

   Administration transferred to the Computer Center Operations Group (IRB) of Dortmund University; the name DENIC is created

3. 1993

   Founding of the interest group IV-DENIC on the initiative of DFN, EUNET and Xlink

4. 1994

   The data center of Karlsruhe University takes over administration of .de domains

5. 1996

   Founding of DENIC eG in December by 37 German Internet Service Providers

6. 1997

   Establishment of the DENIC main office in Frankfurt am Main

7. 2006

   DENIC takes over registration of the ENUM domains for the German numbering range (+49)

8. 2020

   Introduction of .de Registry Lock as protection against unwanted manipulation of domain data

9. 2021

   Registration of the 17 millionth .de domain on 13 July; 25 years of DENIC eG; rollout of the first virtual nameserver location in Sydney (DNS 3.0)

10. 2022

    Construction of DENIC's own cloud platform; study confirms .de as the most popular domain ending in Germany

11. 2023

    Migration of the .de registration system to a cloud-native stack; founding of the first European TLD ISAC; host of ICANN78 in Hamburg

12. 2024

    Founding of IGF-D e.V. to strengthen the multistakeholder dialogue on internet governance in Germany

13. 2025

    Introduction of the OpenPAQ initiative for validating address data; new digital presence in December

14. 2026

    30 years of DENIC eG