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Information Sciences Institute
Marina del Rey, California

If you like sun, palm trees, and informa- tion systems research, there’s no bet- ter place than the Information Sciences Institute in Marina del Rey, California.

Sitting in one of the conference rooms or offices on the west side of the Information Sci- ences Institute’s headquarters in Marina del Rey, California, it’s hard to ignore the view of the ocean and the sailboats in the marina. Somehow, ISI researchers manage to come to the office every day and get something done. They are too busy designing and building the next generation of information systems to be distracted by the sun and palm trees outside.

Part of the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering, the Information Sciences Institute employs 350 engineers, scientists, graduate students and staff. ISI researchers are guided by the institute’s founding vision: to bridge the gap between academia and industry by conducting research that transforms ideas from theory into practice.

HISTORY

ISI was founded in 1972 to help the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) study emerging technologies related to computer communications. At that time, DARPA was interested in technologies that could be used for the ARPANET, the experimental communications network that was the predecessor of the Internet.

ISI played a key role
in the administration
of the early Internet,
and it still hosts one
of the Internet’s 13
DNS root servers.”

Starting with early work on the ARPANET, ISI participated in the development of many of the core technologies that make up the Internet. ISI researcher Jon Postel co-authored many of the key Internet standards, including IPv4, SMTP, and FTP, and was the long-time editor of the “request for comments,” or RFC, series that defined many of the core principles and protocols of the Internet.

In 1983, another ISI researcher, Paul Mockapetris, invented the domain name system (DNS), the service that translates domain names into IP addresses. Today, ISI still hosts one of the Internet’s 13 DNS root servers.

ISI also played a key role in the administration of the early Internet. In addition to his role as the RFC editor, Postel also served as the administrator of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), the entity that manages IP addresses and top-level domain names such as .com and .net. ICANN, the organization that runs IANA and many of the Internet’s other governing boards today, is still headquartered in the same building as ISI.