DNS Belgium or DNS.be is a non-profit organisation responsible for managing the .be top level domain. Domain names are registered by the various agents of DNS Belgium, on behalf of their individual clients, as part of a decentralised registration and applications procedure.

Established in 1999 by the Internet Service Providers Association

Internet Service Providers Association

The Internet Service Providers Association, or ISPA, is a British body representing providers of Internet Services.-History:ISPA was established in 1995 as the first trade association for ISPs, promoting competition, self-regulation and progress within the Internet industry...

, Fabrimetal and the Belgium Telecommunications Users Group, DNS Belgium adopted this decentralised network of registrars on December 11, 2000 in order to create a simpler, automated procedure for the registration of domain names. Since 2003, the company has been party to a data escrow

Escrow

An escrow is:* an arrangement made under contractual provisions between transacting parties, whereby an independent trusted third party receives and disburses money and/or documents for the transacting parties, with the timing of such disbursement by the third party dependent on the fulfillment of...

 agreement, to ensure continuity of services. The organisation's name is derived, in part, from the term domain name server

Domain name system

The Domain Name System is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities...

.

DNS.be is a founder member of the EURid

EURid

EURid vzw/asbl is a non-profit organisation established on 8 April 2003 by the European Commission as the domain name registry to operate the new .eu top-level domain....

 consortium

Consortium

A consortium is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal....

 which administers the .eu

.eu

.eu is the country code top-level domain for the European Union . Launched 7 December 2005, the domain is available for organisations in and residents of EU member states. The TLD is administered by EURid, a consortium consisting of the national ccTLD registry operators of Belgium, Sweden, Italy...

TLD, and provided the model upon which the organisation is based.