Acronym for Network Solutions, Inc. The organization responsible, since 1992, for registering top-level Internet domain names and maintaining the authoritative (“A”) database of top-level domains replicated daily on 12 other root servers on the Internet. In 1998, with the privatization of Internet administration, the functions performed by NSI (under cooperative agreement with the U.S. National Science Foundation) became the responsibility of ICANN, a new, nonprofit organization. NSI remains active, but its association with the U.S. government entered the “ramping down” phase in 1998/1999. See also IANA, ICANN.