Secure Domain Name REGISTRY???

X: Complaints and criticism that Network Solutions was a monopoly began to build after 1997. What was SAIC’s reaction to that?

JRB: No one could deny that it was a monopoly and that something should be done about it. The question was what. Extensive negotiations took place with the government over six months, with the decision that NSI would be broken into two pieces. We gave up the registrar part of the business, and anyone could become a registrar if they could demonstrate their ability to our satisfaction. The part that NSI and SAIC kept was the registry—managing the gigantic database of all the domain names in the world. To have a new domain name entered into the domain registry cost the registrars $6 a year, which I think is still in effect.