The general purpose particle detector DELPHI at the Large Electron Positron collider at CERN was built to give the complete information of each event. DELPHI uses ring imaging Cherenkov counters to provide hadron identification in most of the momentum range below 45 GeV/c and over almost the full solid angle. Charged particles traversing gaseous and liquid fluorocarbon radiators create photons used for Cherenkov angle reconstruction. Some of the design features of the detector will be presented, with emphasis on the experience which was gained in the operation of these large systems. The hadron identification power of the ring imaging Cherenkov detector closely meets the main design values. Data processing and performance of the detector will be discussed using dimuon events collected during 1994. Pion rejection factors for kaon tagging will be shown.