The Internet Network Information Center, known as InterNIC, was the Internet governing body primarily responsible for domain name and IP address allocations from 1972 until September 18, 1998 when this role was assumed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). It was accessed through the domain name internic.net, with email, FTP and World Wide Web services run at various times by SRI, Network Solutions, Inc and AT&T.
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InterNIC is a registered service mark of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The use of the term is licensed to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).[1]
The first central authority to coordinate the operation of the network was the Network Information Center (NIC) based in Doug Engelbart's lab at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park, California.[2] In 1972, Elizabeth J. Feinler, better known as Jake, became principal investigator of the project.[3] The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) assigned the numbers, while the NIC published them to the rest of the network. Jon Postel fulfilled the role of manager of IANA, in addition to his role as the RFC Editor, until his death in 1998.
On the ARPANET, hosts were given names to be used in place of numeric addresses. Owners of new hosts sent email to HOSTSMASTER@SRI-NIC.ARPA to request an address. A file named HOSTS.TXT was distributed by the NIC and manually installed on each host on the network to provide a mapping between these names and their corresponding network address. As the network grew, this became increasingly cumbersome. A technical solution came in the form of the Domain Name System, designed by Paul Mockapetris. The Defense Data Network Network Information Center (DDN-NIC) at SRI handled all registration services, including the top-level domains mil, gov, edu, org, net, com and us. DDN-NIC also performed root nameserver administration and Internet number assignments under a United States Department of Defense contract starting in 1984.[4]
In 1990 the Internet Activities Board proposed changes to the centralized NIC/IANA arrangement.[5] 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.[6]
By the 1990s, most of the growth of the Internet was in the non-defense sector, and even outside the United States.[5] 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,[7] 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.[8] Later, General Atomics was disqualified from the contract after a review found their services not conforming to the standards of its contract.[9] 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.[10]
In 1998 both IANA and InterNIC were reorganized under the control of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California non-profit corporation contracted by the US Department of Commerce to manage a number of Internet-related tasks.[11] The role of operating the DNS system was privatized, and opened up to competition, while the central management of name allocations would be awarded on a contract tender basis.[12]
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.[13]
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.[14]