Information Sciences Institute - History and Achievements

History and Achievements

In addition to helping develop TCP/IP and the Domain Name System (DNS), ISI contributed to the Net by editing the "Request for Comments" (RFC) series, the written record of the emerging network's technical structure and operation, from 1977 through 2009. RFC editor and Internet pioneer Jon Postel was based at ISI until his death in 1998.

ISI also created the world's first e-commerce site, MOSIS, which produces specialty and low-volume chips for corporations, universities and other research entitites worldwide. The Institute helped develop, and was the first entity to implement, Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP). Some of the first Net security applications, and one of the world's first portable computers, also originated at ISI.

The Institute was founded in 1972, when packet switching pioneer Keith Uncapher left RAND Corporation with backing from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In the 1970s, ISI helped create Internet forerunner ARPANET, among other projects. In 1982, the Institute created the DNS and MOSIS. In 1983, it launched TCP/IP, the event that many Net participants consider the birth date of the Internet, and the SOAR cognitive architecture. Grid computing was launched in 1997, co-parented by ISI researcher Carl Kesselman. The Globus Toolkit initiative that Kesselman co-led is now the de facto standard for grid architecture.

Achievements in the 2000s include significant advances in sensor nets, geospatial mapping, tactical language training "serious games," reliable space electronics, self-configuring robots, automated construction and large-scale simulation.