BIND 9 Authored by Nominum Development Team Now Available on Internet Software Consortium Site.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 6, 2000

Newly Architectured Domain Name System Software Offers Tighter

Security, Compliance with DNSSEC and Full IPv6 Support

The Internet Software Consortium (ISC) has announced the release of BIND 9, written by Nominum, Inc. under an ISC outsourcing contract. BIND, an acronym for Berkeley Internet Name Domain, is the most commonly used domain name server on the Internet and implements the Domain Name System (DNS) suite of protocols.

DNS enables virtually all internetworking applications such as e-mail, web browsers and file transfers.

Available as Open Source from the Internet Software Consortium, BIND 9 is the world's first DNS implementation to fully support IPv6 and the DNS security enhancements specified by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards body in RFC 2535. Russ Mundy, Manager of Network Security Research for NAI Labs, affirms the importance of BIND 9's security features, "As a leading provider of security solutions, Network Associates is pleased to have contributed to the security-related design and development of BIND 9. The improved security and performance capabilities of BIND 9 help to secure the name system for the Internet. Our researchers at NAI Labs continue to work with the ISC, the Internet Engineering Task Force and key network operators to help bring long-needed security to critical elements of the DNS."

Based on a multi-processor scalable, multi-threaded architecture, BIND 9 is a complete rewrite of BIND, which was originally written in 1983 at the University of California at Berkeley. This latest release features modularized code for security auditability, use of "programming by contract" development paradigm for internal consistency checking and much greater RFC conformance while maintaining a large degree of backwards compatibility with earlier versions of BIND.

David R. Conrad, Executive Director of the Internet Software Consortium, commends the enhancements of the much-anticipated BIND 9 release: "I want to thank all the members of the Open Source community who contributed to this important effort. The newest implementation of BIND has been completely re-architected, with clean interfaces between internal modules and a streamlined architecture that is light-years ahead of previous versions. Nominum's development team took the time to build BIND 9 from the bottom up, and their hard work has really paid off, resulting in extraordinary speed, scalability and security".

Nominum President and CEO Will Thomas is very pleased with results of the development effort. "BIND version 9 is a major rewrite of the underlying BIND architecture, resulting in significant improvements that are certain to have positive global impact on the Internet's Domain Name System. BIND 9 is the first Open Source Domain Name Server to provide full IPv6 support as well as incorporating significant security enhancements. Enterprise customers, ISPs, e-commerce businesses and the telecommunications industry are sure to benefit from the advanced capabilities of the software. Our experts at Nominum are here to offer assistance with BIND 9 upgrades in the form of technical support, training and consulting services."

The development team at Nominum has been focused on developing BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) and DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) software for the Internet Software Consortium as well as providing support, consulting, training and custom development to a global user base. The ISC is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing and maintaining quality Open Source reference implementations of core Internet protocols. BIND version 9 development was underwritten, in part, by the following organizations:

-- Compaq Computer Corporation

-- Hewlett-Packard

-- IBM

-- IPWorks, Inc.

-- Network Associates, Inc.

-- Silicon Graphics, Inc.

-- Stichting NLNet

-- Sun Microsystems, Inc.

-- U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)

-- USENIX Association

-- Verisign, Inc.

Bernie Volz, CTO of IPWorks, Inc, says his company is proud to have been a sponsor of the BIND 9 effort: "We believe BIND 9 is the next generation DNS server on which to support IPv6 and large scale DNS deployment. It will be important to our customers over the next few years as the explosive growth of the Internet continues, especially when considering the new kinds of devices to be connected to the network. The ISC and Nominum have done an outstanding job in delivering this technology".

"USENIX is always supportive of projects like Bind 9," says Andrew Hume, Vice President of the USENIX Association. "It directly helps our members who are system and network administrators, and facilitates our other members who use the Internet to do their research or to build their products. We also appreciate that Bind 9, like nearly all the software that the USENIX community has historically used, is Open Software."

To download a copy of BIND 9, users should go to http://www.isc.org/products/BIND/bind9.html and follow the instructions outlined therein. For BIND 9 documentation, including system requirements, configuration references, troubleshooting and security considerations, please visit http://www.nominum.com/resources/Bv9ARM-091200.pdf.

About the Internet Software Consortium:

The ISC is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing and maintaining quality Open Source reference implementations of core Internet protocols. ISC code helps keep key protocols running by insuring interoperability, compliance with important aspects of the standards, and by providing an easy "plug-and-play" solution for vendors to offer products that are compatible with the rest of the Internet. ISC efforts are supported by the donations of generous sponsors and other parties who believe that freely available implementations of key protocols are necessary to keep the Internet running. The ISC administers these grants of money and equipment to qualified software developers who then create and/or maintain freely available software used on most of the Internet. More information about the Internet Software Consortium may be found at http://www.isc.org/.

About Nominum:

Nominum, Inc. is the world's leading provider of Internet naming and address management solutions that provide the Domain Name Service (DNS) necessary for virtually all internetworking software. Nominum supports and writes the implementation known as Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND), the most commonly used domain name server on the Internet, as well as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), the most widely used Open Source software for the automated assignment of IP addresses. BIND and DHCP are freely available as Open Source via the Internet Software Consortium's website: http://www.isc.org/. Nominum offers enterprise customers, e-commerce businesses, Internet Service Providers and telecommunications companies infrastructure assistance with their most demanding name and IP address management requirements via training, technical support, consulting and outsourcing solutions. For more information about Nominum, please visit their web site at www.nominum.com.