"The first use of the DNS took place on June 23, 1983, 20 years ago, writes nominum"

As the world’s largest and busiest distributed database, the DNS handles billions of requests every day and was the first proof that database replication could be invisible and reliable on a global scale.

paul mockapetris works there on new applications for dns such as intentional domain names, ip telephony, ip sec development, ... ( web hosting news), as other companies and research inttitutes, i have to add.