E&EM Students and Faculty Meet with Internet Godfather

A number of E&EM program graduate students and faculty recently got a chance to meet with the founder of one of the most important companies in the evolution of the Internet.  That person is Dr. Donald N. Telage, who started the company Network Solutions in the early 1990s and nurtured it into the Internet giant it is today.

As most readers will know, Network Solutions is the company that has been the sole assignor of domain names since the beginning of the Internet.  Dr. Telage assumed the presidency of Network Solutions in the early 1990’s after it was purchased by SAIC from its original owners.  After taking the company independent, he saw it grow from its humble beginnings to a remarkable period of exponential growth.

While the number of domain names that have been registered in the past few years is mind-boggling, it is nothing compared to the promise the future holds, according to Dr. Telage.  He expects the number to soar past the 6 billion mark in the next few years, at which point the number of domain registrations will exceed the world’s population. Furthermore, Dr. Telage expects continued exponential growth for years after that milestone is achieved, as companies increase their use of independent domain names for every product imaginable, such as for individual soap products, movies, and almost anything else.

Of course, this phenomenon is extremely important to the field of environmental and energy management.  The imaginative uses of individual domain names already is driving countless innovations as engineers, scientists, managers and others seek to find new ways of protecting our environment as the world’s population, industrialization, urbanization, and energy use continue to grow.