InterNIC Registration Services 1996 Annual Progress Report

Cooperative Agreement NCR-9218742

February 5, 1997

[Table of Contents omitted.]

1. Significant Events

Help Desk Support

• In June, voice telephone lines and telephones were installed to support temporary hires assigned the task of handling the increased call volume to the InterNIC Receivables Section.
• Effective June 17, the InterNIC's Help Desk hours were extended until 9 pm Monday through Friday, and 8am until 5pm on weekends; these hours were continued through July 12.
• In June, InterNIC telephone trunks were separated from Network Solutions trunks and the InterNIC trunks were changed to Central Office Trunks, thereby providing increased ability to isolate problems.
• A new voice messaging system was installed on July 19, 1996.
• A telephone trunk study was done by Bell Atlantic in August; additional telephone trunks were recommended and were ordered to handle the help desk call volume.
• The following foreign language skills were added to the Call Center during the year: Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese (Mandarin), Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi.
• In November, the Call Center reconfiguration was completed and Billing CSRs moved downstairs from the third floor into the newly configured Call Center on the first floor.

Name Registration Support

• In May, domain, host and contact template revisions were released in support of the implementation of Guardian.
• In May, an Investigation & Research function was instituted as part of the Customer Service Section to provide an internal escalation procedure and investigation function for customer complaints.
• New domain, host and contact template revisions were released in support of the implementation of Guardian on June 15, 1996.
• In July, HostReg and CReg templates started being processed automatically; previously they had to be processed manually; after this change, about 50% were being processed automatically.
• The auto-registration software was modified in July to sort requests into six groups: (1) COM, (2) ORG, (3) NET, (4) GOV, (5) EDU and (6) TLD; this eliminated a manual step in the process and allowed the ability to put an increased priority on GOV, EDU and TLD requests.
• The Processing Center Manager is now on call 24 hours a day via a pager.
• Approximately 96% of the total new domains registered in October were processed automatically.
• Effective in December, resources (people, hardware, software and space) are being utilizing 24 hours per day during the week; both day and night staff are trained to handle all processing tasks, giving the flexibility to respond to any temporary system problems and to handle temporary increases or backlogs in a particular processing area.

Billing Support

• In June, the process of sending out 60-day renewal notices was initiated.
• In June, revisions to the Billing Status Report were made to better meet customer needs regarding billing status of domain names.
• In October, contracts were negotiated and executed to outsource the following activities:
  • Printing and mailing of invoices to Osprey Imaging
  • Receiving telephone credit card payments to First Data Call Interactive; an interactive voice response system will be used.
  • Processing credit card payments with the associated credit card companies to First Data Merchant Services; credit cards to be accepted are VISA, Master Card, American Express, Discover/NOVA, and Diners Club.
• In November, the process of outsourcing most fulfillment services was started; this includes printing, folding, inserting, bar-coding, and mailing of invoices and 15-Day Deactivation Letters; previously, just the folding, inserting and mailing tasks were outsourced.

IP Support

• A new ISP template was completed in January.
• In March, the IP allocation draft was accepted in the CIDR Working Group to become a Best Current Practice (BCP) RFC.
• Mark Kosters and Kim Hubbard traveled to Canada in March to meet with Canada to discuss the InterNIC temporarily taking over processing of IP numbers.
• The draft IP Allocation document (RFC 1466) was released in May as a BCP, awaiting official approval.
• Kim Hubbard made an IP Allocation presentation at OneISPCon in San Francisco in August.
• In October, Kim Hubbard met with Jon Postel (IANA), David Conrad (APNIC) and Daniel Karrenberg (RIPE) in California to discuss IP issues.
• In November, staffing plans and a preliminary budget were completed with regard to separating the IP Section from InterNIC Registration Services.

Information Services Support

• Domain Name Registration Help materials were completed in January.
• Major revisions in the InterNIC WWW site occurred in January, April, and June.
• In May, two CuSeeMe Focus Group meetings and two in-person Focus Group meetings were held with R&E community members;
  • Susan Estrada (ISOC) served as the facilitator of the first in-person session with Joan Gargano (U. C. Davis), Nick Trio (ISOC.IBM), Don Mitchell (NSF), Robin Murphy (NSI) and Tom Newell (NSI) participating.
  • George Brett served as the moderator of the second in-person session with Don Mitchell (NSF), Susan Calcari (Net Scout Services), Gleason Sackman (Net Happenings), Linda Hutchinson (Iowa State), Martyne Hallgren (Cornell CuSeeMe project), Ellen Hoffman (Eastern Michigan University), Barbara Smith (Maryland SAILOR project), Daniel Dern (author/consultant), Robin Murphy (NSI) and Tom Newell (NSI) participating.
• In July, coordination with the American Libraries Association/Library and Information Technology Association (ALA/LITA) for the 15-Minute Training Series was completed.
• InterNIC Template Tools Suite (ITTS) v. 1.13 was implemented on the InterNIC RS web site in July.
• In August, RoadMap 96 workshops were made available through InterNIC RS, resulting in 1,800 subscribers in the first three days.
• In August, copyright issues were resolved with regard to the 15-Minute Series training offering.
• Indexing, search engine scripts, and the first 20 modules were completed in August for the 15-Minute Series training offering.
• Network Solutions agreed to be a co-sponsor of the 1997 CyberFair event in cooperation with the Global School Net Foundation; MCI and CISCO are the other co-sponsors.
• In September, Listserv capabilities were used to initiate a mass mailing to all Administrative contacts notifying them of Revision 2 of the Name Dispute Policy; about 291,673 unique addresses were involved.
• Administrative Contacts for all domain names were notified about Revision 2 of the Name Dispute Policy (effective September 9th), including a minimum of one attempt for each of 291,673 contacts.

Engineering Support

• In April, all information and database files for the RS machines were ported to the Auspex 150 NSF server.
• In April, the tracking system files were successfully transferred to the Auspex 650 NSF server.
• The Guardian application was implemented on June 15, 1996.
• A second UUNET T-1 line and two MCI T-1 lines were installed, bringing the InterNIC's total to 5 T-1s in July.
• Classless IP allocation was announced to the Internet community in July and software for classless allocation was installed.
• Whois software was modified to display the Billing Contact in July.
• In July, the problem that caused errors in the exporting of payment information from the Billing Database to the Ingres Database was isolated to be related to Microsoft Access running under Windows 95.
• Rate limiter software was written and installed to control the number of hits on the Whois database.
• Two new root servers were built in October.
• New fax software was distributed to CSR workstations in October.
• The Registration Database was migrated to Open Ingres 1.2 in October.
• An Ingres consultant associated with a Computer Associates Business Partner provided analysis and support for the Registration Database on the Sparc Center 2000 on November 18-20.

Miscellaneous

• In June, Mark Kosters, Tom Newell and Dave Graves participated in a meeting with Larry Landweber to discuss multiple registries and multiple Top Level Domains (TLDs).
• In June, press releases were prepared and distributed to announce the following: (1) the implementation of Guardian; and (2) the delay of deactivating domain names for lack of payment until June 24, 1996.
• Two Account Manager positions were filled effective October 19th to provide special customer service to larger customers.
• A letter was sent to 10 of the largest ISPs and 6 RBOCs in October to communicate upcoming InterNIC changes and to alert them to the fact that an Account Manager would be contacting them for feedback.
• Training Support:
  • Staffing of the InterNIC Training Section was completed in November with the transfer of two InterNIC staff members and the hiring of one outside candidate.
  • First Virtual payment processing training was provided to all InterNIC CSRs on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, November 21-23.
  • Billing-Outsourcing Overview training materials were prepared and provided to Information Services for addition to the InterNIC internal web site.
  • Furniture and equipment requirements for a new training facility were completed.
• In November, legal staff provided a standard response for CSRs to use for customers who ask about the InterNIC policy with regard to registering offensive names.

2. Accomplishments

2.1 Objectives

Table 2-l summarizes accomplishments made with regard to 1996 InterNIC Registration Services goals and objectives set by Network Solutions in the Annual Progress Report for the period starting on December 1, 1994 and ending on March 31, 1996.

2.2 Performance Accomplishments

This section contains tables and charts that summarize InterNIC Registration Service performance statistics through December 31, 1996.

2.2.1 Domain Registration Accomplishments

This section contains the following tables and charts that summarize InterNIC Registration Service Domain Registration performance statistics through December 31, 1996:

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2.2.2 IP Accomplishments

This section contains the following tables and charts that summarize InterNIC Registration Service IP performance statistics through December 31, 1996:

[Figure 2.2.2-1 omitted.]

[Table 2.2.2-1 omitted.]

2.2.3 US Domain Accomplishments

This section contains the following table that summarizes US Domain performance statistics through December 31, 1996:

[Table 2.2.3-1 omitted.]

2.2.4 Help Desk Accomplishments

This section contains the following table that summarizes InterNIC Registration Service Help Desk performance statistics through December 31, 1996:

[Figure 2.2.4-1 omitted.]

2.2.5 Information Services Accomplishments

This section contains the following table that summarizes InterNIC Registration Service Information Services performance statistics through December 31, 1996:

[Figure 2.2.5-1 omitted.]

[Table 2.2.5-1 omitted.]

2.2.6 General Accomplishments

This section contains the following table that summarizes general InterNIC Registration Service performance statistics through December 31, 1996:

[Figure 2.2.6-1 omitted.]

[Table 2.2.6-1 omitted.]

Table 2.2.6-2 lists new country Top Level Domains (TLDs) registered in 1996.

3. Community Involvement

3.1 Community Outreach Activities

Table 3-1 identifies major community outreach activities undertaken in 1996.

3.2 InterNIC Site Visits

Following is a sample of the groups/individuals hosted by InterNIC Registration Services in 1996:

• Jon Postel of ISI (IANA) and Don Mitchell of the National Science Foundation to discuss issues related to multiple registries and new ITLDs.
• Representatives from the Mexican NIC to discuss domain registration and IP allocation issues.
• Jesse Marshall, Assistant Commissioner for Trademarks, U. S. Patent and Trademark Office to discuss USPTO policies and procedures for handling domain names.
• Hu Qiheng, Professor, Vice President of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering. (The Peoples Republic of China)
• The Chinese Ministry of Telecommunications.

4. The Year in Review

Networking technology races along at a dizzying pace, and the explosive growth of the Internet continually threatens to outstrip the physical, organizational, and societal infrastructures that support the network. Keeping up with the demands of this expanding user community has kept the InterNIC and Network Solutions, Inc. very busy over the past year.

Network Solutions, Inc. and the InterNIC will be moving forward under both old and new leadership. On November 1, 1996 Gabe Battista officially became the new CEO for NSI. Formerly president and chief executive officer at Cable and Wireless, Inc., Battista brings years of experience and leadership in the networking technology field to the top position at NSI. Don Telage continues in the position of chief operating officer, and Michael A. Daniels continues to serve as chairman of the board for NSI.

As CWI's president and chief operating officer from February 1991 to 1995, Battista developed a "customer focused" business strategy which helped to increase the company's revenues from approximately $424 million to $736 million and more than triple its operating profit, from $22 million to $76 million annually during that period. From 1987 to 1990, Battista was the chief operating officer of National Telephone Services, the second largest long distance operator service company in the U.S. Under his leadership, the company grew from $12 million in annual revenues with operating losses in excess of $13 million in 1987 to revenues of $186 million with an operating profit of $8 million in 1990. The company was sold to Telesphere Communications, Inc. in the fall of 1990. Between 1984 and 1987, Battista served as president of US Sprint, Eastern Group, where he had responsibility for providing sales and services to customers in 22 states and the District of Columbia. Prior to that, he worked for GTE Telenet and General Electric managing a variety of national and international business development projects.

In the public eye

While there was plenty to occupy the InterNIC in Herndon, Va., with the number of new domains being registered each month climbing to over 80,000 in the last quarter of 1996, we nonetheless managed to maintain quite a significant presence in the Internet community. As in other years, our staff and managers played an active role in the Internet Engineering Task Force, attending all three of IETF meetings held in 1996 (Los Angeles, CA, 3/96; Montreal, Canada, 6/96; San Jose 12/96).

Kim Hubbard and Mark Kosters, two of the InterNIC's talented managers, co-authored the document "Internet Registry IP Allocation Guidelines." The document was accepted by the IETF and its coordinating body, the Internet Engineering Steering Group, through the standard process of community review and consensus, and was subsequently released as Request for Comment (RFC) 2050 and accepted as Best Current Practice (BCP) 12 in November of 1996. The guidelines in the document outline the requirements for managing the increasingly limited IP address space and make recommendations for responsible, effective allocation and use of this resource by those involved in the process. A copy of RFC 2050 can be found at http://ds.internic. net/rfc/rfc2050.txt

Other InterNIC and NSI staff criss-crossed the continent in 1996, participating in numerous meetings and conferences, delivering presentations, and addressing a wide segment of the Internet user community. Forums and topics included: Supercomm in Dallas, TX (presentation on the history of Internet technology); INET '96, the annual conference of the Internet Society, in Montreal, Canada (presentation on electronic mail, mailing lists, and discussion groups as tools for the K-12 classroom); ONE ISPCON in San Francisco, CA, (presentations on the InterNIC/NSI Domain Name Dispute Policy, as well as IP issues); the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) in Washington, DC (presentations on Guardian, and an InterNIC update); the West Virginia Rural Development Committee (keynote address covering how the Internet can change the lives of rural communities); the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX) Internet Administration Workshop (presentation on Registration Technical Policies); and finally, a meeting of the DC Chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC) in Reston, VA (presentation on the InterNIC's history, growth, current role, and the issue of multiple top-level domains). Many of these presentations are available on our website at http://rs.internic. net/presentations/.

A trademark by any other name...

Traditionally, a company's presence in the business community has been tied to a singularly distinct element - their trademark. Those were the old days. Today, as the Internet moves at breakneck pace toward becoming a premier commercial marketing tool, domain names have taken on new importance in corporate strategy and identity. Although the value to a company of having a domain name that corresponds to their trademark is perfectly clear, the rights and responsibilities of domain name registrants vs. trademark holders have at times been, well, less than clear. NSI, in its role as domain name registrar under the InterNIC agreement, has found itself squarely at the center of this uncharted storm.

On August 9th, NSI announced the second revision of the Domain Name Dispute Policy. The policy, which went into effect 30 days later on September 9th, identifies the responsibilities of domain name registrants with respect to trademarks; outlines the steps that registrants and trademark owners should follow to provide reasonable safeguards against trademark infringement; clearly states that NSI plays no role in resolving or arbiting trademark disputes, and reiterates that domain names are registered on a first-come, first-serve basis. This policy framework balances the often divergent interests of a broad community and has been successful at both minimizing legal conflict as well as ensuring disputes stay between the two disagreeing parties. Only 17 lawsuits out of 850,000 registrations (.000024 or 2.4 ten-thousandths of 1%) have included the Registry as a defendant.

The revisions to the existing Domain Name Dispute Policy, and in fact the existence of the policy itself, reflect the months of hard-won knowledge and experience NSI has garnered as a pioneer in the area of "cyberlaw." It has indeed been a challenge to confront both the abilities and limitations of our society's existing social and legal infrastructure where the electronic medium is concerned. The full-text of the Domain Name Dispute Policy, Second Revision is located at http://rs.internic.net/domain-info/internic domain-6. Html

"So what do you guys do?...Oh, so you're the InterNIC..."

Although Network Solutions, Inc., through its InterNIC activities, probably deals with more Internet users than any other company in the world, the InterNIC/NSI connection is still surprisingly unclear for a large number of the InterNIC's constituency. This past fall, NSI and the InterNIC took their show on the road to provide the networking community with a chance to "meet the InterNIC," ask questions, and hopefully gain a better understanding of both the InterNIC and NSI.

We traveled first to Atlanta for Networld + Interop (Sept. 16-20, 1996), where a steady stream of visitors flowed through our exhibit booth. Our staff responded to hundreds of questions and comments about the InterNIC, NSI, domain name registration, our directory/database services, and our consulting activities.

We then headed to the Big Apple for Fall Internet World '96 (Dec. 9-13,1996). Inspired by our experience in Atlanta, we set up a help desk in our exhibit booth and provided live, on-site domain name registrations. Our help desk staff were kept hopping - registering new domains, handing out NSI tee-shirts, and making buttons personalized with visitors' domain names. In an interesting twist on Christmas shopping, a number of people abandoned the pull of Macy's and Bloomingdales to shop at the NSI/InterNIC booth instead, registering domain names for friends and family members as Christmas gifts. Throughout the three days, however, we were equally busy answering policy-related questions, explaining how the domain name system works, and introducing the networking community to the full range of InterNIC's services and NSI's business areas.

On the Research and Education Front...

Network Solutions, Inc. and the InterNIC are much more than simply names and numbers. Over the course of 1996, the InterNIC's Information and Education Services Section was hard at work developing and refining a wide range of training resources, current awareness services, and resource discovery tools, as well as promoting awareness of these services within the research and education communities for whom they were developed.

The Information and Education Services Section grew out of an extended outreach program - aimed at the research and education community - that was conducted by the InterNIC over the last quarter of 1995 and the first quarter of 1996. The program was launched in the summer of 1995, when Tom Newell left the University of Texas at Austin and the ranks of the research and education community to join the InterNlC and assume the position of NIC Liaison. As NIC Liaison, Newell was charged with: 1) establishing a relationship between the InterNIC and the research and education community; 2) working with members of this community to identify the most significant problems and challenges they face in today's networked environment, and; 3) determine appropriate ways in which the InterNIC, given its role and mission, might assist the research and education community with meeting those challenges.

Over the next 9 months, Newell became a familiar figure at the major academic conferences, delivering numerous presentations and inviting comment from researchers and educators on how the InterNIC might help them make the most of the Internet. The InterNIC also established a mailing list to facilitate discussion between the InterNIC and the research and education community, and distributed a web-based survey to solicit additional feedback and ideas.

Culminating in May of 1996, the outreach effort concluded with a series of in-person and videoconferenced focus groups. The in-person focus groups were hosted in Herndon, VA, but the videoconferenced sessions actually used the Internet to discuss the Internet, employing CUSeeMe to link participants around the country and across the Atlantic. These focus groups gathered together prominent members of the academic and research community - all of whom have long standing involvement with networking technology and Internet development - to discuss ways in which the InterNIC might assist their community in meeting the rapidly growing challenges of the networked world.

Several recurrent themes surfaced during the course of the outreach activities: organizations needed relief from persistent yet critical tasks such as training; intermediaries (computer services departments, libraries, faculty) needed filtering and selective reporting to help them stay on top of new technologies and Internet resources; and an awareness of what other institutions were doing with regard to networking would be very helpful to organizations in this community as they strive to use technology to help them fulfill their missions.

In response, we developed the 15 Minute Series, a collection of free, modular, and extensible training materials on Internet topics, designed specifically for the Internet trainer. Available as either Microsoft PowerPoint files or as compressed and archived HTML files, the training modules can be used either via the trainer's local web server or in a non-networked setting. We were also delighted to begin sponsoring Patrick Crispen's extremely popular email-based Internet tutorial, Internet Roadmap '96. Roadmap '96 workshops now start every two weeks, and an easy to navigate web version has been implemented for the "occasional" student.

The Net Scout staff also had their noses to the grindstone this year. Net Scout is a project of the InterNIC and is sponsored by Network Solutions under the National Science Foundation cooperative agreement that established the InterNIC. The perennially popular Scout Report, a weekly, annotated update on Internet resources and tools of interest to researchers and educators (as well as lots of other folks) that is distributed via email and the web, surpassed the 40,000 subscriber mark by the end of the year. During the first part of the year, the Net Scout turned to the community - to scout ideas as to how Net Scout's services might better serve the needs of its users. A survey went out to all subscribers of the Scout Report and the resulting data was analyzed by the Wisconsin Survey Research Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where the Net Scout staff is located. As a result of the survey, completed in July, Net Scout effected improvements to existing services and identified and implemented a number of new services.

Notable among the new services was an Internet newsletter produced for K-12 kids by K-12 kids - K.I.D.S., or Kids Investigating and Discovering Sites. The newsletter, a cooperative endeavor between two school districts in Madison, WI, and Boulder, CO, released its first bi-weekly issue on November 5th. In addition, the Scout Toolkit, which provides summaries and descriptions of network tools, was updated to include a new look and an increased emphasis on critical analysis and emerging technologies. And in direct response to feedback from the survey, the Scout Report staff began this December preparing and distributing bi- monthly compilations of the resources and tools reported in the weekly update. These bi-monthly compilations are arranged under 8 broad subject headings: Arts and Humanities, Business and Economics, Law, Medicine, Science, Social Science, Network Tools, and Weekend Scouting and are distributed to the subscribers of the Scout Report.

To keep the Internet community informed of InterNIC's activities as well as new technologies, emerging issues, and other developments that will affect the future of the Internet, we launched our monthly electronic newsletter, InterNIC News, on April 1st. Picking up the thread of the earlier, print-based, NSF Network News, InterNIC News seeks to provide a forum for the exploration, examination, and discussion of today's news and tomorrow's technology.

To promote the fruits of these labors, InterNIC/NSI staff, along with Net Scout staff, made the rounds at these academic conferences: the American Library Association's (ALA) annual conference in New York, NY; the Association for Computing Machinery/Special Interest Group for University and College Computing Services (ACM/SIGUCCS) in Chicago, IL; EDUCOM '96 in Philadelphia, PA; the Library and Information Technology Association/Library Administration and Management Association (LlTA/LAMA) National conference in Pittsburgh, PA; and CAUSE '96 in San Francisco, CA. Between manning exhibit booths, holding poster sessions, and delivering formal presentations, the staff of the Information and Education Services Section spoke with literally hundreds of networking and information professionals from both the academic and commercial community, gathering valuable feedback to help us target our efforts more directly at the needs of this sector. The full range of InterNIC's Information and Education Services may be browsed at http://rs.internic.net/nic- support/

Back to school!

Network Solutions, Inc. also went back to school this fall - armed with wiring kits instead of books. In October, NSI donated 2 wiring kits, one to Lake Anne Elementary in Reston, VA and one to St. Charles Borromeo Elementary in Arlington, VA as part of the Net Day East program. Net Day East was an effort to get the K- 12 sector "wired" and ready to take advantage of technology in the classroom. Perhaps even more valuable, however, was the time many NSI staff members donated on weekends and afternoons to help with the wiring of the area schools and coordination of the Net Day East project. More information on the Net Day East effort is available at http://205.1 17.18.2:80/netday-east/

In addition, NSI volunteered in July to become one of three corporate executive sponsors, along with Cisco Systems and MCI Corporation, of CyberFair '97. CyberFair is a project of the Global SchoolNet Foundation that "encourages schools to use the Internet to share resources, establish partnerships, and work together to accomplish common goals." The first CyberFair, in 1996, was so successful that CyberFair '97 was immediately put in the works. For more information, consult the CyberFair '97 homepage, available via the The Global SchoolNet Foundation's website [http://www.gsn. org/gsn/cb/index.html].

The size of the task NSI and the InterNIC are charged with grows in direct proportion to the growth of the Internet as a communications and business medium. Developments in networking technologies also perpetually raise users' expectations and, consequently, the level and quantity of service demanded of those who support the network. As one might imagine, the activity level at the InterNIC accordingly resembles that of an airport on the day before Thanksgiving in the midst of a fare war.

We have perhaps the largest and most diverse customer base in the field, possessing a tremendous variety of reasons for seeking our services. Our customers also have a great deal invested in the future success of the Internet, and consequently in the responsible and effective management of critical resources such as domain names and IP numbers. It is with all this in mind that we have listened to our customers and, over the past year, gone to work to develop and implement services, tools, and resources that take into account the needs of our customers today as well as the needs of the community tomorrow. Following is a summary of some of the more notable improvements and new services the InterNIC launched in 1996.

The InterNIC Template Tool Suite was developed to provide an easy-to-use web interface for the registration process. Released in May, the Template Tool Suite offers registry customers the opportunity to search the Whois database, choose between a single page form for registration or step-by-step guidance through the process, and track the status of their registration - all via the web. The InterNIC Template Tool Suite can be accessed at http://rs.internic.net/cgi- bin/itts

The implementation of fees for domain name registrations gave rise to an entirely new concern: billing and accounts receivable. In response to the many, many requests from our customers, we announced a new invoicing procedure on October 24th. The new procedure moved to one domain name per invoice, a change from the previous practice of billing multiple domains on a single invoice. We took this step to accommodate those organizations who may need to pass on the costs of domain name registrations to third parties. The new invoicing procedure actually represents the introduction of an alternative billing method, however, it does not lock our customers into the one domain per invoice option. Consolidated statements are still available for those customers who wish to be billed for multiple domains with a single invoice.

To make the payment process both easier and faster for our customers, NSI and the InterNIC began seriously investigating web payment options as well as outsourcing for some of the billing and payment processes. The result? On December 2nd, NSI launched web payment for domain names via First Virtual Holdings, Inc.'s VirtualPINTM system.

The First Virtual system works by using its VirtualPIN as an alias for the customer's credit card, thereby allowing customers to make purchases via the web without sending their credit card number across the network. First Virtual confirms every transaction with a customer via email prior to charging the customer's credit card for the purchase.

Customers who opt for the First Virtual payment method for their domain name registration fees can apply for a VirtualPIN via the InterNIC's website. A demo of the process, as well as additional information, is provided at the following URL: http://rs.internic.net/cgi-bin/fv/payment

NSI also reached agreement with several other companies to provide billing and accounts receivable services for the InterNIC. These outsourcing arrangements are expected to considerably streamline and speed the entire payment process, benefiting both the InterNIC and its customers. In December, a new invoicing process went into operation. As a result, invoicing will occur much more quickly and invoices have been updated to include more information so that our customers can more easily understand their accounts. For customers paying by check, we also implemented a new check processing procedure in December. When all steps in the process are complete, this new arrangement will result in check payments being posted to the customer's account the day after (and in some cases, the same day) they are received at the processing address. Our new invoices also reflect the PO boxes now used for check payments under this new system. For our credit card customers, we have taken steps to make it easier to pay with a credit card by phone. In January of 1997, we expect to implement a 1-888 number our customers can call seven days a week, 24 hours a day, to provide their credit card numbers and pay for their domain registrations. The 1-888 number will be able to handle an unlimited amount of traffic. NSI also continues to investigate options for credit card payments made directly via the web.

The InterNIC processes tens of thousands of templates each month via email. The information provided on these templates comprises the content of a publicly available database (Whois) which facilitates the management of Internet-connected networks. To maintain the integrity of the database and provide a secure environment for registration activity, our staff must verify that requests to modify or change information in a database record come from a reasonable source - someone who is authorized to make such requests for that record. We also consider it important to know that the people who make the requests are who they say they are - this is authentication. Enter Guardian, a scaleable model for authorizing changes and modifications to database records and authenticating the sources of those requests.

Guardian, which was released in May, enables the registry customer to specify one of three elective levels of security and authentication for the information they provide. Customers may choose from the following three options: "email from" - the email address of the sender must match the email address of an authorized contact for the record; encrypted password - a clear-text password is encrypted, sent with the request and must match the encrypted password of the information being guarded; and PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), which enables the requester to "sign" the request with a secret "key" which must match a public "key" they keep on file with the InterNIC. A list of frequently asked questions about Guardian, along with the original proposal and other information is provided at http://rs.internic. net/guardian/.

Looking ahead

As we start 1997, we know what to expect. The Internet will continue to grow, society and its existing framework will continue to be challenged by that growth, and we Will be part of this turbulent yet exciting scenario. And, of course, in many ways we do not know what to expect - technology and its users continue to break molds and surprise existing thresholds.

Who could have predicted the growth over the past year? To return to the numbers, second-level domain name registrations in the COM, EDU, GOV, ORG, and NET top level domains grew from 198,741 at the close of 1995 to 897,567 at the close of 1996. The number of updates, or modifications, performed each month for existing domain names steadily increased, from 5,277 in December of 1995 to 152,816 in December of 1996. The number of email messages received at the hostmaster address, which handles email related to domain registrations at the InterNIC, rose from 89,673 in December of 1995 to 222,718 in December of 1996, peaking at 244,228 in November of 1996, with a daily average of 8,140 messages in that month. Between March and December of 1996, the percentage increase in InterNIC activities grew as follows: email requests - 107.4%; postal or fax requests - 297.1%; telephone calls - 61.6%; domain names registered - 65.4%; domain name record updates - 750.8%; autonomous system number allocations 289.0%.

The only area in which transactions decreased was IP number allocations. This decrease is deceptive, however, and in no way should the figures be interpreted to indicate less demand. The fact that fewer IP numbers were allocated reflects the circumstance of a finite resource and the increasingly difficult and complex task of effectively managing this resource in a manner consistent with the Internet community's interests. Fewer IP number allocations do not mean a lighter workload or an easier road for the InterNIC's IP Section; as demand increases and supply diminishes, conservation becomes more critical and IP number allocation becomes a more challenging task. As we step into 1997, we look forward to continuing to work with the Internet community to address the issues surrounding the numeric addressing scheme.

As the task facing the InterNIC and NSI has grown, so have the project and the company. We have increased the size of our full-time staff threefold in the course of the year, and our physical space has likewise expanded threefold to meet the needs of the InterNIC project. We have added trunk lines to our phone system during the year to help us handle the steadily increasing volume of phone calls, and we are waiting for yet additional trunk lines to be installed around the beginning of 1997. And we continue to invest significant amounts in new hardware, software, and engineering talent to better enable us to handle the phenomenal growth that the Internet, and consequently our role, experiences daily. What has been the result of this investment? Over 85,000 domains were registered in the month of November alone, and over 90% of those requests were automatically processed by our auto-parser within 24 hours.

We are not content to stop here, however. As the Internet stands poised to become truly the most ubiquitous communications medium in history, issues such as Internet II, Ipv6, new top-level domains, and secure electronic commerce are but a few of the challenges on the horizon. Although the road ahead promises to be uneven, it also promises to be exciting. NSI and the InterNIC view the events of 1996 as invaluable experience, and we look forward to continuing to put that experience to work for the Internet community in 1997.