NSI
 | |
| Industry: | Domain Name Registration |
| Founded: | 1979 |
| Headquarters: | Herndon, VA, United States |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Website: | networksolutions.com |
| Twitter: |  @netsolcares
|
| Key People | |
| Tim Kelly - President & CEO | |
NSI is an acronym for Network Solutions Incorporation. It is a Limited Liability Company (LLC) which runs the domain name registration business. From the date of its formation till January 2009 Network Solutions has managed more than 6.6 million domain names. It also provides website design and hosting services. It plans and creates opportunities in the ecommerce sector for small and emerging companies by providing them search engine optimized and secured platform for their business on web. [1][2]
History
Network Solutions was incorporated in January 1979, in Washington D.C., it was initiated as a technology consulting formed by Gary Desler, Ty Grigsby, Emmit J McHenry, and Ed Peters. In the early years it concentrated on providing software programming services to their wide variety of clients, mostly in the IBM environment. In 1982 its annual revenue passed $1 million and later grew to $18.5 million in 1986.
1993: After the Domain Name System (DNS) was published in 1984, it became necessary for the National Science Foundation (NSF) to use an administrator for registering domain names. So in 1993 Network Solutions won a contract from NSF to register domain names.
1995: Network Solutions is acquired by SAIC (Science Application International Corporation). SAIC is a FORTUNE 500 engineering and technology application company which deals with many United States Federal Government agencies including the defense agencies. [3]
1997: Network Solutions gets listed on NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations: the U.S. Stock Market) and raised about $67 million in public offering. Its symbol is NSOL.
1998: Network Solutions is ranked among the top hundred Information technology services providing companies. It was ranked 33rd.
2000: Network Solutions was acquired by VeriSign, Inc. for $21 Billion.
2006: Network Solutions acquired Monster Commerce, an e-commerce solutions company founded by Stephanie Leffler and Ryan Noble in Belleville. [4]
Work of NSI in Domain Name Registry
NSI at first functioned as an administrator for domain name registry along with U.S. Defense Information System Agency (DISA) under a sub-contract in 1991. NSI issued free .com, .org, .mil, .gov, .edu and .net along with free Internet Protocol address blocks. NSI in 1993 became the sole company to be registrar of top level domain names. The grant was provided by National Science Foundation after a bidding process in which NSI was a sole bidder. With this grant NSF was the sole registrar for Top Level Domain Names (TLDs), it also maintained a central database for the assigned Domain Names called the WHOIS. This improved monopoly of NSI in the domain name registration. The permission given by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to charge fees for the domain name registration from the applicants led NSI to levy hefty charges on the costumers applying for Domain Names. In 1995 NSI charged $100 for two years registration. Later overwhelmed by the increasing monopoly of NSI, the United States Department of Commerce (DOC) amended its contract with NSI and forced NSI to provide domain name registration to competing registrars at wholesale prices, rather than the regular rate of $34.99 per year the amount it still charges today. DOC and NSF also assisted to the formation of a new organization which will oversee the registration of domain names and their accreditation. This new organization was aimed to reduce the monopoly of NSI in the domain name registration business and allow new private organizations a market place for the entry into this business. The organization was named as Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). [5][6]
References