Chose your color

Frequently visited

Frequently asked questions

  • I am looking for a domain name registrant. Where can I look it up?

    The Whois is an easy-to-use tool for checking the availability of a .nl domain name. If the domain name is already taken, you can see who has registered it.

    On the page looking up a domain name you will find more information about what a domain name is, how the Whois works and how the privacy of personal data is protected. Alternatively, you can go straight to look for a domain name via the Whois.

  • I would like to transfer my domain name to another registrar. What is the procedure?

    To get your domain name transferred, you need the token (unique ID number) for your domain name. Your existing registrar has the token and is obliged to give it to you within five days, if you ask for it. The procedure for changing your registrar is described on the page transferring your domain name.

  • The details registered about me/my company are incorrect or out of date. How can I get them updated?

    To update the contact details associated with your domain name, you need to contact your registrar. Read more about updating contact details.

  • Why is my domain name in quarantine?

    When a domain name is cancelled, we aren't told the reason, so we can't tell you. You'll need to ask your registrar. The advantage of quarantine is that, if a name's cancelled by mistake, you can always get it back.

    One common reason is that the contract between you and your registrar says you've got to renew the registration every year. If you haven't set up automatic renewal and you don't renew manually, the registration will expire.

  • Ik heb een klacht over mijn provider/registrar. Kan ik daarvoor bij SIDN terecht?

    Wanneer je een klacht hebt over of een geschil met je registrar dan zijn er verschillende mogelijkheden om tot een oplossing te komen. Hierover lees je meer op pagina klacht over registrar. SIDN heeft geen formele klachtenprocedure voor het behandelen van een klacht over jouw registrar.

  • What conditions do I have to meet as a registrar?

    Would you like to be able to register domain names for customers or for your own organisation by dealing directly with SIDN? If so, you can become a .nl registrar. Read more about the conditions and how to apply for registrar status on the page becoming a registrar.

More frequently asked questions

India and China go for large-scale IPv6 implementation

The handicap of a head start

Close up of the map of China and India on a globe
  • Tuesday 23 April 2019

We had an IPv4 address shortage when we only had computers connected to the network. Now there are half a billion smartphones in India, and before long air conditioners, fridges, wearables and countless other devices will be connected to the net as well, says Vaishali Sangtani, Product Marketing Manager at Akamai. IPv6 is the future: all upcoming improvements to internet protocols, standards and security arrangements will be based on IPv6, not on IPv4. So it's really important that we don't miss the boat.

Use of IPv6 is increasing particularly quickly in India and China. LinkedIn's Senior System Manager Franck Martin recently wrote a blog describing how more and more traffic from those two countries is using IPv6. In traffic from India, the IPv6 share shot up from 22 to 35 per cent in the space of a year. According to Martin, mobile service provider Reliance Jio has played a big part in the jump by converting several hundred million Android users to IPv6-only.

In China, IPv6 users account for nearly 10 per cent of the total user population. Indeed, migration to IPv6 is an explicit element of a government policy adopted ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games. China aims to complete the changeover in the next few years: all Chinese internet users are to be using IPv6 by 2025.

In his blog, Martin predicts that India and China will soon overtake the United States, where IPv6 adoption has already passed 50 per cent. However, according to the latest Akamai stats, India is already ahead of the US: data gathered by Akamai puts IPv6 use in traffic from the US at 46 per cent, compared with 62 per cent in Indian traffic.

IPv6 only

What these huge, emerging economies have in common is mobile operators that have migrated large cohorts of users to IPv6-only connections. Previous research by APNIC (the RIR for the APAC region) also found that mobile users are much more likely to use an IPv6 connection to access the internet than desktop or tablet users.

Pie charts of APNIC showing the relationship between the use of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.

As more servers support IPv6, an IPv6-only infrastructure becomes more attractive. After all, the use of NAT implies address translation, and CGNAT requires two translation steps. Whereas, if all your users have IPv6 connections, address translation is needed only for servers that exclusively support IPv4, which are gradually declining in number.

Administrative burden and complexity

Another consideration is that, for security reasons, most access providers are required (or wish) to keep accurate records of which connections are assigned to which users. With IPv6 and basic forms of NAT, that's easy to do: you simply have to record who has which IP address or prefix. Indeed, you can even record the details of each connection centrally on a one-off basis. With CGNAT, however, the connections between the NAT layers have to be factored in. That implies significant additional complexity and administrative burden.

The more common server-side IPv6 becomes, the more attractive client-side implementation of IPv6 becomes, because of the technical complexity and resource requirements. Client-side implementation also opens the way for removing IPv4 from the access network by setting up an IPv6-to-IPv4 gateway for residual traffic to IPv4-only servers.