Twenty-five years ago, on 25 April 1986,
the .nl domain was registered by CWI, Centrum Wiskunde &
Informatica. It was one of the first country domains in the world. Six
days later, Piet Beertema, at that time system administrator, registered
the first internet domain in the Netherlands: cwi.nl. This is still in
use by CWI.
Beertema was given the authority over the .nl domain
and he managed it for ten years. In 1996, authority was handed over to
Stichting Internet Domeinregistratie Nederland (SIDN), co-founded by
CWI. Currently, SIDN has administrated ca. 5.5 million unique domain
names of which 4.2 million are active. Not only is this one of the
highest numbers worldwide, the Netherlands also ranks second in the
number of domains registered per inhabitant.
The first open internet connection between Europe and the United States originated from CWI as well. On 17 November 1988,
a short e-mail correspondence confirmed the connection of CWI to
NSFnet, an American academic computer network and the forerunner of today’s internet. In these early days, most of the transatlantic internet traffic had to go through CWI.
More information
Piet Beertema's homepage: http://www.godfatherof.nl/
More CWI Achievements: http://www.cwi.nl/achievements
SIDN press release: http://sidn.pressdoc.com/13801-nederland-viert-een-kwart-eeuw-internetgeschiedenis
SIDN - history of .nl: http://www.de25jaarvan.nl
