REGISTRY COMPANY WIELDS GREAT POWER IN E-MAIL FRONTIER.

Byline: Evan Ramstad Associated Press 

The Internet has no center, beginning or end, but nearly every company, institution or organization that connects to it eventually deals with Network Solutions Inc.

The company since early 1993 has run the main registry of Internet addresses, or domains. Called InterNIC, it is the place where IBM, for instance, signed up to get ibm.com as its Internet destination.

This distinction has thrust Network Solutions into a position of broad influence over the global data network. Originally a small government contractor, the technologically adroit firm has found itself turned into a kind of electronic traffic cop - and a target of longtime users who hate to see the Internet commercialized.

Until last fall, the federal government paid for the domain registry, a legacy of the Internet's origin in military and academic computing. The government now pays to register only educational and governmental institutions.

Everyone else has to pay Network Solutions a $50 annual fee, a change that angered Internet users (individuals who connect to the Internet through a provider like CompuServe or America Online do not have to pay).

Network Solutions stirred up even more controversy by recently starting to remove nonpayers from the Internet and with its policy that gives trademark holders priority when a domain name is in dispute.

``At every turn in trying to accommodate the community in this pioneering transition, we've created a bad guy image for ourselves,'' said Donald Telage, president of Network Solutions.

Bad guys - especially those with a virtual monopoly - usually find themselves challenged by somebody who wants a piece of the business. Network Solutions is no exception - the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which is involved in the technical end of the network, says it plans to organize a competition for the right to register domains.

But Network Solutions, for all the controversy, is incredibly spry, keeping pace with the rush of companies and organizations connecting to the Internet and preparing new services to maintain its growth when that rush ends.

``We fix our wheels without stopping the wagon,'' Telage said, drawing again on the frontier metaphor.

BIG AMBITIONS

In addition to maintaining the Internet registry for the most popular domains - .com, .org, .edu, .gov and .net - Network Solutions has an Internet engineering group that works with companies to set up the connections and is jumping into the directory business. One aim: to create a way to find someone on-line without using a cumbersome address.

``We want to become the first global Internet utility,'' Telage said. ``We see ourselves as developing and offering the underlying services.''

That sounds ambitious for a company that employed about 20 people a year ago and 150 now.

But Network Solutions is subsidiary of Science Applications International Corp., a $2.5 billion technology products and services firm. About 80 percent of its work is for the federal government and about half of that is military and intelligence-related.

SAIC bought Network Solutions in March 1995 to round out its telecommunications practice. At that time, the Internet registry was a small part of Network Solutions' work.

Telage, who led SAIC's telecom unit at the time, brought Network Solutions into that operation at first. Then, with the growth of the Internet registry, he made that business a stand-alone entity again.

``It wasn't until two or three months after the acquisition that we really started to see the exponential explosion of the Internet,'' said David Graves, who started Network Solutions' Internet business several years ago and remains its top manager. ``People were hit between the eyes.''

In March 1995, there were about 52,500 registrants in the domains that Network Solution records. By March 1996, the company was recording that many new registrants each month. By the end of July, there were just under 500,000 registered domains.

The windfall to the company has not been as great as the number of registrants would suggest. Many have not paid and a sizable portion of the registrations have been by speculators who try to sell domain names to people who really want them.

NAME DISPUTES

Criticism about Network Solutions' registration fee actually faded as people chalked it up as a small, previously hidden, cost for a basic level of stability on the Internet.

More troublesome has been the company's policy for resolving disputes between parties that want the same domain name. It is designed to keep the company out of a fray and look to courts for more guidance.

``The courts will have to decide how trademark law applies to cyber-law, which now is basically no law,'' Telage said. InterNIC is http://www.internic.net.

What goes in an address

Internet addresses are characterized by three-letter initials that signify the type of organization attached to them.

The initials used in the addresses, which are also known as ``domains,'' typically follow the symbol in electronic mail or ``www'' designation in a World Wide Web site.

Two authorities in the United States control domain registration systems. The first, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority at the University of Southern California, controls names that end with a .us abbreviation.

The Internet Network Information Center, or InterNIC, controls more commonly used addresses with endings like .com, .edu and .gov. InterNIC's name registry is administered by Network Solutions Inc., a private company in Herndon, Va.

CAPTION(S):

Photo, Box

Photo: Donald Telage, president and chief executive of ficer of Network Solutions, says besides registering e-mail addresses, his company wants to become the Internet version of a utility.

Associated Press

Box: What goes in an address (see text)