NSF Cooperative Agreement No. NCR-9218742,
Amendment 6


NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
4201 WILSON BOULEVARD
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA 22230

Mr. David M. Graves
Contract Administrator
Network Solutions, Inc.
505 Huntmar Park Drive
Herndon, VA 22070

Cooperative Agreement No. NCR-9218742
Amendment No. 06

Dear Mr. Graves:

By this amendment, the National Science Foundation hereby approves your Year 4 Annual Report, dated February 6, 1997 and your Year 5 Program Plan dated May 5, 1997 as supplemented by the letter dated June 19, 1997 (and accompanying budgetary information) and as modified by the changes to pages 12, 13, and 14 (of the plan itself) and the the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) Articles of Incorporation and Draft Bylaws also submitted by (separate) letter dated June 19, 1997.

The Foundation has observed the clear expression of the Internet community at the several workshops (held over the past eighteen months) that IP (Internet Protocol) number allocation and domain name assignment should be separated. We believe that the suggestions (first put forward at the December 1996 meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force) for the information of the ARIN and the followup discussions conducted on the Internet mailing lists have been compelling.

Approval of your Year 5 Program Plan constitutes full approval by the Foundation that the Awardee proceed with the formation of ARIN as outlined in the Program Plan. Further, we hereby agree that, at such time as ARIN is established and operational and Awardee notifies us that items 1 through 8 as apecified on pages 13 and 14 of your Year 5 Program Plan have been completed, the Foundation will relieve, release and discharge Network Solutions, Inc. from any responsibility for the IP number assignment, Autonomous System number assignment, and IN-ADDR.ARPA tasks (currently performed by Awardee under this agreement) which have been transferred to ARIN.

This final release will be effected by the Awardee sending a letter to the Foundation stating that:

Except as modified by this amendment, all other Agreement terms and conditions remain unchanged.

Sincerely

Karen L. Sandberg Grants and Agreements Officer