.de is the

country code top-level domain A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It ...

(ccTLD) for the

Federal Republic of Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spa ...

. DENIC (the Network Information Centre responsible for .de domains) does not require specific

second-level domain In the Domain Name System The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected ...

s, 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. The name is based on the first two letters of the German name for Germany (''Deutschland''). Prior to 1990,

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In t ...

had a separate

ISO 3166-1 ISO 3166-1 (''Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 1: Country codes'') is a standard defining codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest. It ...

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. 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). 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 The (; abbreviated as DB or DB AG) is the national railway company of Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and p ...

), ix.de (the German computing magazine iX), and hq.de. A fourth domain, bb.de ( Bilfinger Berger), was later deregistered (and after 2009 registered by another company). As of 23 October 2009, DENIC allowed the registration of single- and two-letter domains as well as number-only domains. Registrations of

internationalized domain name An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It ...

s (IDN) are also accepted so that all diacritics of German, many diacritics of other languages and the eszett, ß, may be used. In many of the

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal re ...

, e.g., Spanish, French, Romanian and Portuguese, "''de''" expresses the

genitive In grammar In linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due ...

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.

References

External links

DENIC

List of DENIC members

DNSSEC in the .de Zone
{{DEFAULTSORT:De Country code top-level domains Internet in Germany Computer-related introductions in 1986 Mass media in Germany Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries members 1986 establishments in Germany sv:Toppdomän#D

See also

References

External links