Internet Systems Consortium

Last updated
Internet Systems Consortium
Founded1994;30 years ago (1994)
Founder
TypeNetwork Engineering
Focus DNS, BIND, DHCP, Kea, Internet
Location
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Jeff Osborn (President)
Employees
35
Website www.isc.org
Formerly called
Internet Software Consortium
ASN
  • 3557

Internet Systems Consortium, Inc., also known as ISC, is a Delaware-registered, 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that supports the infrastructure of the universal, self-organizing Internet by developing and maintaining core production-quality software, protocols, and operations. [1] [2] ISC has developed several key Internet technologies that enable the global Internet, including: BIND, ISC DHCP and Kea. Other software projects no longer in active development include OpenReg and ISC AFTR (an implementation of an IPv4/IPv6 transition protocol based on Dual-Stack Lite).

Contents

ISC operates one of the 13 global authoritative DNS root servers, F-Root. [3] [4]

Over the years a number of additional software systems were operated under ISC (for example: INN and Lynx) to better support the Internet's infrastructure. ISC also expanded their operational activities to include Internet hosting facilities for other open-source projects such as NetBSD, XFree86, kernel.org, secondary name-service (SNS) for more than 50 top-level domains, and a DNS OARC (Operations, Analysis and Research Center) for monitoring and reporting of the Internet's DNS.

ISC is actively involved in the community design process; it authors and participates in the development of the IETF standards, including the production of managed open-source software used as a reference implementation of the DNS. [5]

ISC is primarily funded by the sale of technical support contracts for its open source software. [6]

History

Originally the company was founded as the Internet Software Consortium, Inc. The founders included Paul Vixie, Rick Adams and Carl Malamud. The corporation was intended to continue the development of BIND software. The founders believed that it was necessary that BIND's maintenance and development be managed and funded by an independent organization. ISC was designated as a root name server operator by IANA, originally as NS.ISC.ORG and later as F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.[ citation needed ]

In January 2004, ISC reorganized under the new name Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. [7]

In July 2013, ISC spun off the Security Business Unit to Farsight Security, Inc. a new company started by ISC founder Paul Vixie. [8]

In early 2020, ISC closed its headquarters in Redwood City, California and moved its operations to Newmarket, New Hampshire. [9]

Open Source

ISC develops and maintains open source networking software, including BIND and two DHCP implementations: ISC DHCP and Kea DHCP. ISC also distributes INN and several older, unmaintained projects. [1] Some early aspects of its software were developed by developers that were commercially employed by Nominum, amongst others. [10]

ISC license

ISC developed and used the ISC license, which is functionally similar to the simplified BSD and MIT licenses. The ISC license is OpenBSD's preferred license for new code. [11]

All current versions of ISC-hosted software are available under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. [12]

DNS root server

ISC operates the DNS "F" root server, [1] the first such server to be distributed using anycast. In 2007 it was announced that ISC and ICANN would sign an agreement regarding the operation of F, the first such agreement made between ICANN and a root-server operator. [13]

Usenet moderators list

ISC maintains and publishes (on ftp.isc.org) the central Usenet moderators list and relays for moderated groups, so individual server operators don't have to track moderator changes. [14]

Internet Domain Survey

Number of Internet hosts worldwide in 1970-2015 Internet Hosts Count log.svg
Number of Internet hosts worldwide in 1970–2015

The Internet Domain Survey searched the Domain Name System (DNS) to discover every Internet host. The survey began when only a few hundred hosts were Internet-linked. [16] The earliest published reports, dated 1993, were performed by Network Wizards owner Mark K. Lottor. The Internet host count was 1313000 in January 1993 and 1062660523 in the January 2017 survey. [17]

ISC ended its sponsorship and publication of the Internet Domain Survey in 2019. [18]

See also

Related Research Articles

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the associated entities. Most prominently, it translates readily memorized domain names to the numerical IP addresses needed for locating and identifying computer services and devices with the underlying network protocols. The Domain Name System has been an essential component of the functionality of the Internet since 1985.

BIND is a suite of software for interacting with the Domain Name System (DNS). Its most prominent component, named, performs both of the main DNS server roles, acting as an authoritative name server for DNS zones and as a recursive resolver in the network. As of 2015, it is the most widely used domain name server software, and is the de facto standard on Unix-like operating systems. Also contained in the suite are various administration tools such as nsupdate and dig, and a DNS resolver interface library.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Vixie</span> American internet pioneer

Paul Vixie is an American computer scientist whose technical contributions include Domain Name System (DNS) protocol design and procedure, mechanisms to achieve operational robustness of DNS implementations, and significant contributions to open source software principles and methodology. He also created and launched the first successful commercial anti-spam service. He authored the standard UNIX system programs SENDS, proxynet, rtty and Vixie cron. At one point he ran his own consulting business, Vixie Enterprises. In 2002, Vixie held the record for "most CERT advisories due to a single author".

A name server is a computer application that implements a network service for providing responses to queries against a directory service. It translates an often humanly meaningful, text-based identifier to a system-internal, often numeric identification or addressing component. This service is performed by the server in response to a service protocol request.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Root name server</span> Name server for the DNS root zone

A root name server is a name server for the root zone of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. It directly answers requests for records in the root zone and answers other requests by returning a list of the authoritative name servers for the appropriate top-level domain (TLD). The root name servers are a critical part of the Internet infrastructure because they are the first step in resolving human-readable host names into IP addresses that are used in communication between Internet hosts.

The DNS root zone is the top-level DNS zone in the hierarchical namespace of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet.

The Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) are a suite of extension specifications by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for securing data exchanged in the Domain Name System (DNS) in Internet Protocol (IP) networks. The protocol provides cryptographic authentication of data, authenticated denial of existence, and data integrity, but not availability or confidentiality.

Site Finder was a wildcard DNS record for all .com and .net unregistered domain names, run by .com and .net top-level domain operator VeriSign between 15 September 2003 and 4 October 2003.

nslookup Utility to query the Domain Name System

nslookup is a network administration command-line tool for querying the Domain Name System (DNS) to obtain the mapping between domain name and IP address, or other DNS records.

DNS spoofing, also referred to as DNS cache poisoning, is a form of computer security hacking in which corrupt Domain Name System data is introduced into the DNS resolver's cache, causing the name server to return an incorrect result record, e.g. an IP address. This results in traffic being diverted to any computer that the attacker chooses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open Root Server Network</span>

Open Root Server Network (ORSN) was a network of Domain Name System root nameservers for the Internet. ORSN DNS root zone information was kept in synchronization with the "official" Domain Name System root nameservers coordinated by ICANN. The networks were 100% compatible, though ORSN was operated independently. The ORSN servers were primarily placed in Europe. ORSN is also used by public name servers, providing Domain Name System access freely for everyone, without any limitation until the project closed in May 2019. ORSN was primarily started to reduce the over-dependence of Internet users on the United States and Department of Commerce/IANA/ICANN/VeriSign, limit the control over the Internet that this gives, while ensuring that domain names remain unambiguous. It also helps avoid the technical possibility of global "Internet shutdown" by one party. They also expect their network to make domain name resolutions faster for everyone.

This article presents a comparison of the features, platform support, and packaging of many independent implementations of Domain Name System (DNS) name server software.

dnsmasq Lightweight DNS and DHCP server software

dnsmasq is free software providing Domain Name System (DNS) caching, a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server, router advertisement and network boot features, intended for small computer networks.

The ISC license is a permissive free software license published by the Internet Software Consortium, now called Internet Systems Consortium (ISC). It is functionally equivalent to the simplified BSD and MIT licenses, but without language deemed unnecessary following the Berne Convention.

dig (command) Network administration command-line tool

dig is a network administration command-line tool for querying the Domain Name System (DNS).

DNS management software is computer software that controls Domain Name System (DNS) server clusters. DNS data is typically deployed on multiple physical servers. The main purposes of DNS management software are:

dhcpd is a DHCP server program that operates as a daemon on a server to provide Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) service to a network. This implementation, also known as ISC DHCP, is one of the first and best known, but there are now a number of other DHCP server software implementations available.

host is a simple utility for performing Domain Name System lookups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Response policy zone</span> Internet firewall mechanism for DNS

A response policy zone (RPZ) is a mechanism to introduce a customized policy in Domain Name System servers, so that recursive resolvers return possibly modified results. By modifying a result, access to the corresponding host can be blocked.

Kea is an open-source DHCP server developed by the Internet Systems Consortium, authors of ISC DHCP, also known as DHCPd. Kea and ISC DHCP are both implementations of the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, a set of standards established by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Kea software is distributed in source code form on GitHub, from various ISC sites, and through a number of operating system packages. Kea is licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "The History of ISC". Internet Systems Consortium. Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  2. ↑ Internal Revenue Service (2007-12-15). "501(c)(3) exemption letter". Internet Systems Consortium. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-11-18. Retrieved 2009-04-11.
  3. ↑ "F-Root". Internet Systems Consortium. 10 July 2019. Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  4. ↑ "Milestone Agreement Reached Between ICANN, and F Root Server Operator, Internet Systems Consortium". ICANN. Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  5. ↑ "IETF Standards Written by ISC Contributors". Internet Systems Consortium. ISC. Retrieved 14 September 2020.
  6. ↑ "2019 ISC Annual Report" (PDF). ISC. Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  7. ↑ "ISC Mission". Internet Systems Consortium. Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  8. ↑ "ISC Spins Off Its Security Business Unit". Internet Systems Consortium. 2 July 2013. Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  9. ↑ "ISC 2019 Year in Review". Internet Systems Consortium. 13 January 2020. Retrieved 14 September 2020.
  10. ↑ "Nominum Inc history". Archived from the original on 2008-12-20. Retrieved 2008-12-04. David Conrad founded Nominum in 1999 to develop BIND9 and ISC DHCP3 for the Internet Software Consortium
  11. ↑ "OpenBSD: Copyright Policy". openbsd.org. Retrieved 5 March 2024.
  12. ↑ "ISC Software Licenses". Internet Systems Consortium. Retrieved 14 September 2020.
  13. ↑ "Milestone Agreement Reached Between ICANN, and F Root Server Operator, Internet Systems Consortium". ICANN . Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  14. ↑ Usenet Hierarchy FAQ Section 4.
  15. ↑ "Internet host count history". Internet Systems Consortium. Archived from the original on May 18, 2012. Retrieved May 16, 2012.
  16. ↑ "ISC Internet Domain Survey". Internet Systems Consortium. Archived from the original on 2008-11-17. Retrieved 2009-04-11.
  17. ↑ "Internet Domain Survey, January 2017". Internet Systems Consortium. Retrieved 2017-02-14.
  18. ↑ "ISC ends Internet Domain Survey". Internet Systems Consortium. 26 August 2019. Retrieved 14 September 2020.
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