[1] When cwi.nl was registered by Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica on 1986-05-01, .nl became the first active ccTLD outside the United States.

[4] Most registrars are ISPs, IT service bureaus and media service bureaus, but several large enterprises with many brand names have also become a registrar, or participant as SIDN calls them, which is a quite uncommon phenomenon in the domain name industry.

Registrars have to pay SIDN a fee for each domain since 1 April 1996, until then registration was free.

In the early days, most of the registrants were universities and research departments of large companies, such as Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium.

Unlike the majority of top level domains, .nl requires each nameserver to use a unique IP address.