The Austrian registry agency is the Internet Foundation Austria, a non-for-profit organization. This foundation aims to support the Internet in Austria, in particular to promote the acceptance of the .at domain administration as a fiduciary institution for the public. For this purpose, its company "nic.at Internet Verwaltungs- und Betriebs-GmbH" was created in 1998. After the total liberalization of the internet domain name registration in Austria, which took place in 1997, the number of registered domains has increased dramatically. Today, there are more than 400,000 registered domain names under the Top Level Domain .at, and the growth rate is of 6157,92 new domain names per month (based on the 2004 monthly average newly registered names). The ccTLD .at was established by the Internic on January the 20 th 1988 and was first managed by the University of Vienna.