# How to - International Members

## Purpose of this Information

The information gives you a first insight into the organizational and technical conditions of DENIC eG.

## DENIC compared to others Registries

In domains, there is a relationship between different parties. Registrars register domains for domain owners or registrants with a registry. DENIC eG, as a registry, is a cooperative and describes its registrars as members. A member is accepted into the cooperative by DENIC by purchasing a share of the cooperative. With membership, a member can, in addition to the registration business, work on committees and participate in the registration policy and technical processes at DENIC.

Second-level Domains

At DENIC, domains are registered directly below the TLD .de.

Domain Query

Personal data is only passed on to domain owners and authorized third parties via DENIC‘s domain query.

DNSSEC

DENIC offers zone encryption to protect zone data from manipulation.

Member account and registration account

DENIC manages your master data for accounting, administrative purposes regarding your membership and for the annual self-disclosure form in a member account. Data that is only related to the registration service is stored in one or more registration accounts.

Duration

Domain contracts with terms and term extensions are not offered by DENIC.

Billing

Domains are billed monthly at DENIC. All fee-based activities of the previous month and the domain inventory at the end of the month are calculated on the first working day (Monday to Friday with the exception of 24.12., 31.12. and public holidays in Hesse, Germany) of a month.

Whitelist

DENIC does not regulate access to the registration system via a list of preferred IP addresses.

Dropcatching

If you want to prepare yourself optimally for the phase after RGP, you can find information at Dropcatching for .de.

Redemption Grace Period (RGP)

A domain is in the RGP for 30 days after deletion. During this time, the domain owner can have the domain restored via the member who deleted the domain. The domain can also be reconnected by a transfer by any other member. If the deletion is not undone, the domain can be registered again after the RGP on the following calendar day. There is no pending delete phase.

Transit

The administration of a domain can be transferred to DENIC if a member no longer wants to manage a domain and there is no deletion request from the domain owner. The domain can be moved from DENIC to another member. The process at DENIC is called "Transit" and is similar to other registries. Examples are the "Billwithdraw" at Nic.at or the "Detag" at Nominet UK.

.de Registry Lock

With a .de registry lock, the data of a domain is protected against manipulation, since every change to the domain data must be confirmed to DENIC. Provider Change (Transfer) DENIC uses authorization information (AuthInfo) when changing providers. The domain owner legitimizes DENIC to change providers by authorizing the request against DENIC with an AuthInfo. The AuthInfo is created immediately before the provider change and is not part of the domain data, which is saved for the domain after registration.

Dispute

In the event of a legal claim to a domain from a party that is not the domain owner, the address of the domain owner will be blocked from changes (Dispute) until the ownership of a domain has been determined. If a different ownership is found as a result, the new domain owner is entered with his address and the dispute block is lifted. DENIC does not support the UDRP arbitration process. Further information on a dispute can be found in the DENIC Domain Terms and Conditions.

General Request and Abuse Contact

A domain at DENIC includes contacts for general inquiries and for domain abuse cases.

E-mail Communication

The dialogue with the members via e-mail is signed in both directions. The members sign their e-mails with a master key (PGP). DENIC‘s master key is available for download from the DENIC website. E-mails must be signed, especially due to sensitive content such as orders.

Predelegation Check

DENIC offers a test tool with which name servers of a zone to which the .de domain should be delegated can be subjected to some tests.

## EPP compared to RRI

1. DENIC does not offer its members an EPP for communication with the registry service, but instead uses its own protocol, "Realtime Registry Interface" or RRI for short.

2. RRI and EPP can process requests in XML, with RRI additionally processing requests in a key/value format.

3. RRI does not know any RENEW command, because the domain inventory is billed on a monthly basis and domains are registered until an request has been sent for deletion.

4. Communication with the RRI is entirely in English, including system messages.

5. The sponsorship client from the EPP corresponds to a registration account, which in turn is assigned to a member.

6. In the RRI, there are three types of contacts for a domain: the domain owner (person or organization), a contact for general domain requests (General Request) and a contact for domain abuse cases (Abuse Contact).

7. In contrast to EPP, RRI is not idempotent. With RRI, a command executed several times in succession with the same parameters is rejected with an error.

8. A request is not automatically checked in the RRI, if a .de Registry Lock has been set for a domain. .de Registry Lock is a protection of the domain data against manipulation.

9. Registrar, contact and name server data are not optional for a CHPROV (DENIC‘s name for Transfer requests) and must be specified.

10. With EPP, the current sponsoring client can reject the request for a transfer (change of provider) from another sponsoring client by command and attribute (<transfer op="reject">) or the requesting client can cancel the transfer (<transfer op="cancel">). At DENIC, our policy does not allow a member to refuse or cancel a transfer. With his authorization, the domain owner decides with an AuthInfo whether the transfer will be carried out.

11. With RRI there is no command to query information (e.g. the processing status) about a transfer request. At EPP, information about a transfer request can be queried with a query option for both open and closed transfer requests.

12. The data given in the request will not be repeated in the response. The RRI‘s replies include short messages with a success or error message.

13. In the case of a domain query, to the RRI, in contrast to EPP, it is not possible to query several domains with one request. At DENIC, domains and contacts are subject to a quota with one domain or one contact per request.

14. The message queue is an important, mandatory component of the provision of information. The information is provided in the RRI.

15. With RRI, the providers involved in a transfer order are informed of the start of the order by e-mail or message queue.

16. Connected name servers do not prevent the execution of a DELETE command with the RRI.

17. The RRI uses its own result codes, which differ from the EPP‘s, so-called message encodings.

18. The status values of a domain object are only set on the server side at the RRI.