InterNIC - Network Solutions

Network Solutions

In 1990 the Internet Activities Board proposed changes to the centralized NIC/IANA arrangement. The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) awarded the administration and maintenance of DDN-NIC, which had been managed by SRI since 1972, to Government Systems, Inc. which subcontracted it to the small private-sector firm Network Solutions, Inc. On October 1, 1991, the NIC services were moved from a DECSYSTEM-20 machine at SRI to a Sun Microsystems SPARCserver running SunOS 4.1 at GSI in Chantilly, Virginia.

By the 1990s, most of the growth of the Internet was in the non-defense sector, and even outside the United States. Therefore, the US Department of Defense would no longer fund registration services outside of the mil domain. In 1993, the US National Science Foundation, after a competitive bidding process in 1992, created the Internet Network Information Center, known as InterNIC, to manage the allocations of addresses and awarded the contract to three organizations: Network Solutions provided registration services, AT&T provided directory and database services, and General Atomics provided information services. Later, General Atomics was disqualified from the contract after a review found their services not conforming to the standards of its contract.

Beginning in 1996, Network Solutions rejected domain names containing English language words on a "restricted list" through an automated filter. Applicants whose domain names were rejected received an email containing the notice: "Network Solutions has a right founded in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to refuse to register, and thereby publish, on the Internet registry of domain names words that it deems to be inappropriate." Domain names such as "shitakemushrooms.com" would be rejected, but the domain name "shit.com" was active since it had been registered before 1996.

Network Solutions eventually allowed domain names containing the words on a case-by-case basis, after manually reviewing the names for obscene intent. This profanity filter was never enforced by the government and its use was not continued by ICANN when it took over governance of the distribution of domain names to the public.

General Atomics' InterNIC functions were assumed by AT&T. AT&T discontinued InterNIC services on March 31, 1998 after their cooperative agreement with NSF expired.