.be is the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

country code top-level domain A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all tw ...

(ccTLD) for

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

. In November 2022, there were 1,746,459 registered

domain name In the Internet, a domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services, and more. ...

s using it.

History

The domain became active in 1989 and was administrated by Pierre Verbaeten of the

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven KU Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) is a Catholic research university in the city of Leuven, Belgium. Founded in 1425, it is the oldest university in Belgium and the oldest university in the Low Countries. In addition to its main camp ...

. In 2000, the control of the TLD was transferred to DNS Belgium. It was announced in November 2005 that the initial registration of domains would be free until the beginning of 2006, though with some limits on the number any individual was allowed to register. This was remarkably popular, with some 17,000 registrations coming in on the first day of the promotion.

Registration

Any .be registration has to be ordered via a registered agent. Domain names are registered directly at second level. BELNET, the federal internet provider for scientific institutions, manages the .ac.be subdomain reserved for academic entities, with a policy of allowing only one active .ac.be domain per institution. Because of this, most universities abandoned their .ac.be SLD as primary domain. This is why ''ucl.ac.be'' shifted to ''uclouvain.be'', ''fundp.ac.be'' to ''unamur.be'', ''ulg.ac.be'' to ''uliege.be'' or ''fusl.ac.be'' to ''usaintlouis.be'' when changing names. The University of Mons-Hainaut, by merging with the Faculté polytechnique de Mons (''fpms.ac.be'') into a new legal entity called the

University of Mons The University of Mons (, ) is a Belgian university located in the city of Mons, founded in 2009 by merging the Engineering Faculty of Mons (FPMs) and the University of Mons-Hainaut. The merging of the institutions was achieved following a g ...

, could change its domain from ''umh.ac.be'' to ''umons.ac.be''.

Regional variants

The Flemish separatist party

Vlaams Belang Vlaams Belang (; ; VB) is a Flemish nationalist, Eurosceptic and right-wing populist political party in the Flemish Region and Brussels Capital Region of Belgium. It is widely considered by the media and political analysts to be on the polit ...

introduced a draft resolution in the

Parliament In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

of the region of

Flanders Flanders ( or ; ) is the Dutch language, Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, la ...

demanding the creation of a Flemish top level domain .vl (for , Flanders in Flemish). However, this resolution failed to receive support of the region's other parties. Only recognized UN member states are eligible for a two-letter domain extension. In October 2008, the Flemish government expressed its intention to obtain a three-letter domain code for Flanders, like .vla, .vln or .fla. In 2014, .vlaanderen and .brussels were added, also administered by DNSBelgium. The domain has also been in use as a logo for the federal government since 2003.

Domain hack

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

uses the

domain hack A domain hack is a domain name that suggests a word, phrase, or name when concatenating two or more adjacent levels of that domain. For example, and , using the domains ''.bot'' and ''.le'', suggest the words ''robot'' and ''example'' respective ...

youtu.be for their

URL shortening URL shortening is a technique on the World Wide Web in which a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) may be made substantially shorter and still direct to the required page. This is achieved by using a redirect which links to the web page that has a ...

service.

References

External links

IANA .be whois information

List of .be registered agents
Internet in Belgium Mass media in Belgium Country code top-level domains Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries members Internet properties established in 1988 {{Section link, sv:Toppdomän#B