.be

Last updated
.be
DNS Belgium logo (en).svg
Introduced5 August 1988 (added to root zone)
TLD type Country code top-level domain
StatusActive
Registry DNS Belgium
Sponsor DNS Belgium
Intended useEntities connected with Belgium
Actual useVery popular in Belgium; also used by YouTube for URL shortening
Registered domains1,746,459 (2022-12-10) [1]
Registration restrictionsNone
StructureNames can be registered directly at second level; some third-level names under categories such as ac.be for academic institutions also exist
Documents Documents
Dispute policies ADR
DNSSEC yes
Registry website DNS.be

.be is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Belgium. As of November 2022 there are 1,746,459 registered domains. [2]

Contents

History

The domain became active in 1989 and was administrated by Pierre Verbaeten of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. In 2000, the control of the TLD was transferred to DNS Belgium.

It was announced in November 2005 that the initial registration of domains would be free until the beginning of 2006, though with some limits on the number any individual was allowed to register. [3] [4] This was remarkably popular, with some 17,000 registrations coming in on the first day of the promotion.

Domain names are registered directly at second level.

BELNET, the federal internet provider for scientific institutions, manages the .ac.be subdomain reserved for academic entities, with a policy of allowing only one active .ac.be domain per institution. Because of this, most universities abandoned their .ac.be SLD as primary domain. This is why ucl.ac.be shifted to uclouvain.be, fundp.ac.be to unamur.be, ulg.ac.be to uliege.be or fusl.ac.be to usaintlouis.be when changing names. The University of Mons-Hainaut, by merging with the Faculté polytechnique de Mons (fpms.ac.be) into a new legal entity called the University of Mons, could change its domain from umh.ac.be to umons.ac.be.

Any .be registration has to be ordered via a registered agent.

The domain has also been in use as a logo for the federal government since 2003. [5]

YouTube also uses the domain hack youtu.be for their URL shortening service.

Regional domains

The Flemish separatist party Vlaams Belang introduced a draft resolution in the Parliament of the region of Flanders demanding the creation of a Flemish top level domain .vl (for Vlaanderen, Flanders in Flemish). [6] However, this resolution failed to receive support of the region's other parties. Only recognized UN member states are eligible for a two-letter domain extension. [7] In October 2008, the Flemish government expressed its intention to obtain a three-letter domain code for Flanders, like .vla, .vln or .fla. In 2014, .vlaanderen and .brussels were added, also administered by DNSBelgium.

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.

A domain name registry is a database of all domain names and the associated registrant information in the top level domains of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet that enables third party entities to request administrative control of a domain name. Most registries operate on the top-level and second-level of the DNS.

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

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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">.ae</span> Country code top-level domain for the United Arab Emirates

.ae is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet for the United Arab Emirates. It is administered by .aeDA which is part of the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority of UAE (TDRA).

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

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">.eg</span> Latin alphabet Internet country code top-level domain for Egypt

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

.gw is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Guinea-Bissau.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.ky</span> Internet country code top-level domain for the Cayman Islands

.ky is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Cayman Islands. The code was chosen as other possible options had already been allocated. Registration was limited to residents and registered companies in the Cayman Islands with a local address, but this restriction was removed in September 2015. The Cayman Islands also has the international three-letter code CYM and has won a bid to be awarded the .cym domain in a future expansion of the top-level domain space.

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

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.np is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Nepal. It is administered by Mercantile Communication Pvt Ltd.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.pa</span> Country code top-level domain for Panama

.pa is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Panama. It was first registered in 1994-05-25. It is administered by NIC Panamá, which is run by the Universidad Tecnologica de Panama.

DNS Belgium is a non-profit organisation responsible for managing the ccTLD .be top level domain, as well as the new gTLD domain extensions .brussels and .vlaanderen. Domain names are registered by the various agents of DNS Belgium, on behalf of their individual clients, as part of a decentralised registration and applications procedure.

In the Domain Name System (DNS) hierarchy, a second-level domain is a domain that is directly below a top-level domain (TLD). For example, in example.com, example is the second-level domain of the .com TLD.

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.

.ss is the designated country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for South Sudan in the Domain Name System of the Internet. It is derived from the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code for South Sudan, which is SS. According to CIO East Africa, the TLD was allocated on 10 August 2011 following the country's declaration of independence from Sudan. The TLD was registered on 31 August 2011, but not added to the DNS root zone and was thus not operational. It was approved at the ICANN Board meeting on 27 January 2019 and was added to the DNS root zone on 2 February 2019.

.vlaanderen is a generic top-level domain for Flanders, Belgium first introduced in 2014.

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References

  1. ↑ "Statistics | DNS Belgium". DNS Belgium. 2022-12-10. Archived from the original on 2022-12-10. Retrieved 2022-12-10.
  2. ↑ "Statistics | DNS Belgium". DNS Belgium. 2022-12-10. Archived from the original on 2022-12-10. Retrieved 2022-12-10.
  3. ↑ .be Advertising Campaign
  4. ↑ DNS BE rounds out successful recruitment campaign by clocking up its one millionth domain name
  5. ↑ "Logo" (in French). Archived from the original on 2014-05-16. Retrieved 2014-05-31.
  6. ↑ Vlaams Belang wil 'B' vervangen door 'VL' op autonummerplaten, landspostcode, internetextentie en burgerluchtvaartuigen
  7. ↑ Postel, Jon (March 1994). "IANA RFC".
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