.de

Last updated

.de
Logo DENIC.svg
Introduced5 November 1986;37 years ago (1986-11-05)
TLD type Country code top-level domain
StatusActive
Registry DENIC
Sponsor DENIC eG
Intended useEntities connected with Germany
Actual useOverwhelmingly popular in Germany and gets some use overseas, also used for domain hacks (e.g. alongsi.de)
Registered domains17,692,579 (2024-04-02) [1]
Registration restrictionsNone
StructureMay register at second level
Dispute policies DISPUTE-Entries
DNSSEC Yes
Registry website denic.de

.de is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Germany. DENIC (the Network Information Centre responsible for .de domains) does not require specific second-level domains, and there are no official ccSLDs under .de ccTLD, as it is the case with the .uk domain range which until 2014 required .co.uk domain for example.

Contents

The name is based on the first two letters of the German name for Germany (Deutschland). Prior to 1990, East Germany had a separate ISO 3166-1 code (dd), and had never delegated a ccTLD, .dd.

.de is currently the second most popular ccTLD in terms of number of registrations with .cn being the first most popular ccTLD and .uk being third. It is third after .com and .cn among all TLDs. [2] The first point of registration for .de domains was at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Dortmund. uni-dortmund.de was among the first registered .de-domains.

.de registrations may be directly ordered from DENIC but it is faster and cheaper to do so via a DENIC member (registrar).[ citation needed ]

Previously, domain names had to be at least three letters long. There were a few two-letter domains registered before the rule was put in place: db.de (Deutsche Bahn, German Railways), ix.de (the German computing magazine iX), and hq.de. Another domain, bb.de (Bilfinger Berger), was later deregistered (and after 2009 registered by another company). As a result of a lawsuit by Volkswagen, which wanted to register the two-letter domain "vw.de", after 23 October 2009, DENIC was forced to allow the registration of single- and two-letter domains as well as number-only domains, such as 123.de, xx.de or v.de. [3]

Registrations of internationalized domain names (IDN) are also accepted so that all diacritics of German, many diacritics of other languages and the eszett, ß, may be used. [4]

In many of the Romance languages, e.g., Spanish, French, Romanian and Portuguese, "de" expresses the genitive of a noun (like "of" in English). This is exploited in domain registrations under the German TLD for romance language webhosts that offer customized sites, like elforo.de (theforum.of), encoding the site name into the URL path, such as elforo.de/wikipedia, meaning theforum.of/Wikipedia.

See also

Generic geographic domains, connected to Germany

Related Research Articles

A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the last non empty label of a fully qualified domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level domain is .com. Responsibility for management of most top-level domains is delegated to specific organizations by the ICANN, an Internet multi-stakeholder community, which operates the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and is in charge of maintaining the DNS root zone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.eu</span> Internet country-code top level domain for the European Union

.eu is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the European Union (EU). Launched on 7 December 2005, the domain is available for any person, company or organization based in the European Union. This was extended to the European Economic Area in 2014, after the regulation was incorporated into the EEA Agreement, and hence is also available for any person, company or organization based in Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. The TLD is administered by EURid, a consortium originally consisting of the national ccTLD registry operators of Belgium, Sweden, and Italy, joined later by the national registry operator of the Czech Republic. Trademark owners were able to submit registrations through a sunrise period, in an effort to prevent cybersquatting. Full registration started on 7 April 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internationalized domain name</span> Type of Internet domain name

An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that contains at least one label displayed in software applications, in whole or in part, in non-Latin script or alphabet or in the Latin alphabet-based characters with diacritics or ligatures. These writing systems are encoded by computers in multibyte Unicode. Internationalized domain names are stored in the Domain Name System (DNS) as ASCII strings using Punycode transcription.

.ca is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Canada. The domain name registry that operates it is the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.uk</span> Internet country code top-level domain for the United Kingdom

.uk is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the United Kingdom. It was first registered in July 1985, seven months after the original generic top-level domains such as .com and the first country code after .us.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.cn</span> Internet country-code top level domain for the Peoples Republic of China

.cn is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the People's Republic of China. Introduced on 28 November 1990, the domain is administered by China Internet Network Information Center, a public institution affiliated with the Ministry of Industry and Information. The domain is the largest ccTLD in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.ie</span> Internet country-code top level domain for the Republic of Ireland

.ie is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) which corresponds with the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code for Ireland. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) list the Computing Services Computer Centre of University College Dublin as its sponsoring organisation for the .ie domain. Since 2000 the business of administrating the domain registry has been handled by IE Domain Registry Limited. Domain name registration is open to individuals located in, or with a significant connection with, any part of the island of Ireland.

A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all two-letter top-level domains are ccTLDs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.ch</span> Internet country code top-level domain for Switzerland

.ch is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Switzerland in the Domain Name System of the Internet. Made available in 1987, only two years after .com, it is administered by SWITCH Information Technology Services.

.sa is the Latin alphabet Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of Saudi Arabia. Domains of this type can be registered through SaudiNIC, a department of the Communications and Information Technology Commission. The Arabic alphabet ccTLD of Saudi Arabia is السعودية.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.sg</span> Internet country-code top level domain for Singapore

.sg is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Singapore. It was first registered in September 1988. It is administered by the Singapore Network Information Centre. Registrations are processed via accredited registrars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.ge</span> Internet country-code top-level domain for Georgia

.ge is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Georgia. .ge top-level domain names are available for direct registration for individuals and companies worldwide, without any restriction on citizenship or residence. Second-level domain names are also available for registration for several specific types of registrants:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.gr</span> Internet country code top-level domain for Greece

.gr is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Greece. Registrations are processed via accredited registrars and domain names in Greek characters may also be registered.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Homoglyph</span> Different glyphs which are visually similar

In orthography and typography, a homoglyph is one of two or more graphemes, characters, or glyphs with shapes that appear identical or very similar but may have differing meaning. The designation is also applied to sequences of characters sharing these properties.

The internationalized domain name (IDN) homograph attack is a way a malicious party may deceive computer users about what remote system they are communicating with, by exploiting the fact that many different characters look alike. For example, the Cyrillic, Greek and Latin alphabets each have a letter ⟨o⟩ that has the same shape but different meaning from its counterparts.

Single-letter second-level domains are domains in which the second-level domain of the domain name consists of only one letter, such as x.com. In 1993, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) explicitly reserved all single-letter and single-digit second-level domains under the top-level domains com, net, and org, and grandfathered those that had already been assigned. In December 2005, ICANN considered auctioning these domain names.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.рф</span> Cyrillic Internet country code top-level domain for the Russian Federation

The domain name .рф is the Cyrillic country code top-level domain for the Russian Federation, in the Domain Name System of the Internet. In the Domain Name System it has the ASCII DNS name xn--p1ai. The domain accepts only Cyrillic subdomain applications, and is the first Cyrillic implementation of the Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) system. The domain became operational on 13 May 2010. As of 2014 it is the most used internationalized country code top-level domain, with around 900,000 domain names.

The domain name .укр is an approved internationalized country code top-level domain for Ukraine. It is a common abbreviation used in Ukraine, as in Ukrbank and Ukrnafta.

An internationalized country code top-level domain is a top-level domain in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. IDN ccTLDs are specially encoded domain names that are displayed in an end user application, such as a web browser, in their language-native script or alphabet, such as the Arabic alphabet, or a non-alphabetic writing system, such as Chinese characters. IDN ccTLDs are an application of the internationalized domain name system to top-level Internet domains assigned to countries, or independent geographic regions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.срб</span> Internet internationalized country code top-level domain for Serbia

.срб is the Internationalised (Cyrillic) Internet country code top-level domain for Serbia. It has been active since May 3, 2011 while the process of registering has started on 27 January 2012.

References

  1. "DENIC". DENIC. 2 April 2024. Archived from the original on 2 April 2024. Retrieved 2 April 2024.
  2. DENIC (September 2018). "Comparison of International Domain Numbers". Archived from the original on 29 October 2018. Retrieved 29 October 2018.
  3. "DENIC eG Eases Domain Guidelines". DENIC.
  4. "IDN character list". DENIC.