As more dial-up customers used the NSFnet a request for proposal was sent out by Merit Network in 1991 to consolidate their various proprietary authentication, authorization and accounting systems. Among the early respondents was Livingston Enterprises and an early version of the RADIUS was written after a meeting. The early RADIUS server was installed on a UNIX operating system. Livingston Enterprises was acquired by Lucent and together with Merit steps were taken to gain industry acceptance for RADIUS as a protocol. Both companies offered a RADIUS server at no charge. RADIUS was in 1997 published as RFC 2058 and RFC 2059, current versions are RFC 2865 and RFC 2866.