 | |
| Formation | 1994; 31 years ago (1994) |
|---|---|
| Founder | |
| Type | Network Engineering |
| Legal status | 501(c)(3) organization |
| Focus | DNS,Internet |
| Location | |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Products | BIND,DHCP,Kea |
Key people | Jeff Osborn (President) |
| Employees | 35 |
| Website | www |
Formerly called | Internet Software Consortium |
| ASN | |
Internet Systems Consortium, Inc., also known asISC, is an American non-profit corporation that supports the infrastructure of the universal, self-organizingInternet by developing and maintaining core production-quality software,protocols, and operations.[1][2] ISC has developed several keyInternet technologies that enable the global Internet, including:BIND,ISC DHCP andKea. Other software projects no longer in active development include OpenReg andISC AFTR (an implementation of anIPv4/IPv6 transition protocol based onDual-Stack Lite).
ISC operates one of the 13 global authoritativeDNS root servers,F-Root.[3][4]
Over the years a number of additional software systems were operated under ISC (for example:INN andLynx) to better support the Internet's infrastructure. ISC also expanded their operational activities to include Internet hosting facilities for other open-source projects such asNetBSD,XFree86,kernel.org, secondary name-service (SNS) for more than 50top-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 theIETF 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]
Originally the company was founded as theInternet Software Consortium, Inc. The founders includedPaul Vixie,Rick Adams andCarl Malamud. The corporation was intended to continue the development ofBIND 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 byIANA, 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 toFarsight 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]
ISC develops and maintains open source networking software, includingBIND and twoDHCP implementations:ISC DHCP andKea DHCP. ISC also distributesINN 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 developed and used theISC license, which is functionally similar to thesimplified BSD andMIT licenses. The ISC license isOpenBSD's preferred license for new code.[11]
All current versions of ISC-hosted software are available under the Mozilla Public License 2.0.[12]
ISC operates theDNS "F" root server,[1] the first such server to be distributed usinganycast. In 2007 it was announced that ISC andICANN would sign an agreement regarding the operation of F, the first such agreement made between ICANN and a root-server operator.[13]
ISC maintains and publishes (on ftp.isc.org) the centralUsenetmoderators list and relays for moderated groups, so individual server operators don't have to track moderator changes.[14]
The Internet Domain Survey searched theDomain 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 was1313000 in January 1993 and1062660523 in the January 2017 survey.[17]
ISC ended its sponsorship and publication of theInternet Domain Survey in 2019.[18]
David Conrad founded Nominum in 1999 to develop BIND9 and ISC DHCP3 for the Internet Software Consortium