In April 2011, the 25th birthday of the .nl domain was celebrated. On 25 April 1986,.nl was registered by CWI, the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in Amsterdam. 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, which is still in use by CWI. Beertema was given the authority over the .nl domain and 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. SIDN celebrated 25 years of .nl with the publication of a magazine and an anniversary website, http://de25jaarvan.nl (in Dutch). 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.
http://www.godfatherof.nl/
