Internet Systems Consortium, Inc., also known as ISC, is a Delaware-registered, 501(c)(3) non-profit

corporation A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and ...

that supports the infrastructure of the universal, self-organizing

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

by developing and maintaining core production-quality software,

protocols Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states * Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state * Etiquette, a code of personal behavior Science and technology ...

, and operations. ISC has developed several key

Internet technologies The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

that enable the global Internet, including:

BIND BIND () is a suite of software for interacting with the Domain Name System (DNS). Its most prominent component, named (pronounced ''name-dee'': , short for ''name daemon''), performs both of the main DNS server roles, acting as an authoritative ...

, ISC DHCP and

Kea The kea (; ; ''Nestor notabilis'') is a species of large parrot in the family Nestoridae found in the forested and alpine regions of the South Island of New Zealand. About long, it is mostly olive-green with a brilliant orange under its wing ...

. 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 An IPv6 transition mechanism is a technology that facilitates the transitioning of the Internet from the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) infrastructure in use since 1983 to the successor addressing and routing system of Internet Protocol Vers ...

). ISC operates one of the 13 global authoritative

DNS 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 ...

root servers, F-Root. Over the years a number of additional software systems were operated under ISC (for example:

INN Inns are generally establishments or buildings where travelers can seek lodging, and usually, food and drink. Inns are typically located in the country or along a highway; before the advent of motorized transportation they also provided accommo ...

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 XFree86 is an implementation of the X Window System. It was originally written for Unix-like operating systems on IBM PC compatibles and was available for many other operating systems and platforms. It is free and open source software under the X ...

kernel.org kernel.org is the main distribution point of source code for the Linux kernel, which is the base of the Linux operating system. Website The website and related infrastructure, which are operated by the Linux Kernel Organization, host the reposi ...

, secondary name-service (SNS) for more than 50

top-level domains A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in ...

, 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 The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...

standards, including the production of managed open-source software used as a reference implementation of the DNS. ISC is primarily funded by the sale of technical support contracts for its open source software.

History

Originally the company was founded as the Internet Software Consortium, Inc. The founders included

Paul Vixie 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 ...

, Rick Adams and

Carl Malamud Carl Malamud (born July 2, 1959) is an American technologist, author, and public domain advocate, known for his foundation Public.Resource.Org. He founded the Internet Multicasting Service. During his time with this group, he was responsible fo ...

. The corporation was intended to continue the development of

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. In January 2004, ISC reorganized under the new name Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. In July 2013, ISC spun off the Security Business Unit t
Farsight Security, Inc.
a new company started by ISC founder Paul Vixie. In early 2020, ISC closed its headquarters in Redwood City, California and moved its operations to Newmarket, New Hampshire.

Open Source

ISC develops and maintains open source networking software, including

and two

DHCP The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network management protocol used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks for automatically assigning IP addresses and other communication parameters to devices connected to the network using a cli ...

implementations: ISC DHCP and Kea DHCP. ISC also distributes

and several older, unmaintained projects. Some early aspects of its software were developed by developers that were commercially employed by Nominum, amongst others.

ISC license

ISC developed and used the

ISC license 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 de ...

, which is functionally similar to the simplified BSD and

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

licenses. The ISC license is OpenBSD's preferred license for new code. All current versions of ISC-hosted software are available under the Mozilla Public License 2.0.

DNS root server

ISC operates the

"F" root server, the first such server to be distributed using

anycast Anycast is a network addressing and routing methodology in which a single destination IP address is shared by devices (generally servers) in multiple locations. Routers direct packets addressed to this destination to the location nearest the sen ...

. 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.

Usenet moderators list

ISC maintains and publishes (on ftp.isc.org) the central

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...

moderators list and relays for moderated groups, so individual server operators don't have to track moderator changes.Usenet Hierarchy FAQ Section 4

Internet Domain Survey

The Internet Domain Survey searched the

Domain Name System 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 t ...

(DNS) to discover every Internet host. The survey began when only a few hundred hosts were Internet-linked. The earliest published reports, dated 1993, were performed by Network Wizards owner Mark K. Lottor. The Internet host count was in January 1993 and in the January 2017 survey. ISC ended its sponsorship and publication of th
Internet Domain Survey
in 2019.

References

{{Reflist

External links

ISC
Official site DNS software Organizations established in 1994 Software companies established in 1994 1994 establishments in California Software companies of the United States