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Network Solutions, LLC is a technology company which was founded in 1979. The domain name registration business has become the most important division of the company; as of 2006, Network Solutions manages more than 7.6 million domain names. Their size, founding status, and longevity have made them one of the most important corporations affecting domain name price and policy.
The company Network Solutions started as a technology consulting company in 1979, with approximately 30 employees, and focused its efforts on applications development. In 1992, Network Solutions was the sole bidder on a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop the domain name registration service for the Internet. Network Solutions was acquired by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in 1995 and listed on NASDAQ in 1997. In 2000, Network Solutions was acquired by VeriSign, Inc. for $21 billion. In 2003, Network Solutions was spun off as a privately held company. The current CEO is Champ Mitchell. Network Solutions is the registrar for many notable domain names such as cnn.com, nytimes.com, washingtonpost.com, ebay.com, paypal.com, amazon.com, myspace.com, intel.com, madonna.com, beatles.com, sting.com, depechemode.com, disney.com, internic.net, verisign.com, ford.com, ibm.com, sun.com, linux.org, kernel.org, freebsd.org, and pgp.com. Registry and Registrar business In 1992, Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) was granted an exclusive contract by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to be the sole Domain name registrar for .com, .net and .org Top Level Domain (TLD) names. NSI also maintained the central database of assigned names called WHOIS. Network Solutions acted as a de facto registrar, selling names directly to end users. After acquisition by SAIC in 1995 a fee of $100 for two years registration was imposed on all domains. The formation of a new industry of domain name registrars put increasing pressure on this arrangement until, in 1999, the domain name industry opened up to partial competition, with NSI retaining its monopoly on .com, .net and .org but having to recognise a separation of registry and registrar. By the end of 1999 the fee for registration had been reduced to a wholesale rate of $6 per year to registered resellers. See also | ||||||||
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