Running the DE-NIC

As the service providers were in competition with each other, the DE-NIC has to be set up in a neutral way in every aspect.

Use of DE-NIC services

Unless registry of last resort services, the DE-NIC was only open for the service providers paying for it.

Handling of end user inqueries

Queries of end users about service providers are handled in a neutral way. The DE-NIC compiles a service provider survey from information provided by the Internet service providers. This is sent out to the end user. If asked for, the DE-NIC publishes contact information of this end user to the service providers, allowing them to contact the end user directly.

End user consultancy

The DE-NIC does not consult end users about how to structure their name or address space. This can be done by the Internet service providers or Internet consultants in general. In practice, this goal is hard to achieve, as reviewing requests of address space is very much intertwined with telling the customer, why his request is unreasonable, resulting in some form of consultancy.

Network infrastructure

The communication between DE-NIC and the service providers on the network level has to be set up in a unbiased way. It is the responsibility of the service providers to provide a network connection to the DE-NIC. The DE-NIC provides several access modes, how to accept lines from the service providers. This includes analog and digital leased lines, ethernet (in case a provider brings his own box) and X.25 PDN.

International connectivity of the DE-NIC has to be organised by the DE-NIC.

Service levels

The DE-NIC provides certain levels of service to the end user and service providers:

• 24h of operation, manned during business hours.
• Fully qualified operators during business hours, available after a call in 2h at the most.
• 2 day response time for requests. Resolving of service provider requests in 3 days at the most.
• Maximum round trip times to certain points in the Internet (RIPE NCC, GIX ...) of less than 1 second.
• Maximum propagation of zone information to secondary servers less than one day.