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 | The Internet Standard Process, ISOC, IAB, IANA, and IETF. |
| The role of RFC’s in the development of TCP/IP |
| Who owns TCP/IP |
The TCP/IP Protocol is a nonproprietary standards, which means that no single company creates or owns the rights to it. Nonproprietary standards are developed with the intent of enhancing connectivity and interoperability by making specifications public so that independent manufacturers can build to such specifications.
There are several permanent committees comprised of industry representatives who develop and oversea these standards. Some examples of these committees are ISOC, IETF, IAB, IANA, and IAN.
(The Internet SOCiety)
The Internet SOCiety (ISOC) is a professional membership society with more than 150 organizational and 6,000 individual members in over 100 countries. It provides leadership in addressing issues that confront the future of the Internet, and is the organization home for the groups responsible for Internet infrastructure standards, including the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB).
The Internet Society's mission statement declares the following, "To assure the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world."
(Internet Architecture Board; also Internet Advertising Bureau)
1) The IAB (Internet Architecture Board) is the Internet Society's overseer of the technical evolution of the Internet. Other IAB activities are included below. They include the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), which works on network technology; the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) , which assigns IP addresses; and the Internet Registry, which manages the Domain Name System.
2) The IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) is an organization that fosters the growth of advertising on the Internet. Membership is available to corporations engaged in selling, measuring, monitoring, or producing advertising on the Internet. The IAB recommends a set of standard-size banner ads for World Wide Web pages.
(The Internet Engineering Task Force)
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the body that defines standard Internet operating protocols such as TCP/IP. The IETF is supervised by the Internet Society's Internet Architecture Board (IAB). IETF members are drawn from the Internet Society's individual and organization membership. Standards are expressed in the form of Requests for Comments (RFCs) which will be discussed in the next section.
(Internet Assigned Numbers Authority)
IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) is the organization under the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) of the Internet Society that, under a contract from the U.S. government, has overseen the allocation of IP addresses to Internet service providers (ISPs). IANA also has had responsibility for the registry for any "unique parameters and protocol values" for Internet operation. These include port numbers, character sets, and MIME media access types.
The role of RFC’s in the development of TCP/IP
The Internet Request For Comments (or RFC) documents are the written definitions of the protocols and policies of the Internet. All the RFCs are published and can be easily read online.
The Requests for Comments (RFCs) form a series of notes, started in 1969, about the Internet (originally the ARPANET). The notes discuss many aspects of computer communication, focusing on networking protocols, procedures, programs, and concepts but also including meeting notes, opinion, and sometimes humor.
The RFC Editor is the publisher of the RFCs and is responsible for the final editorial review of the documents. The RFC Editor also maintains a master file of RFCs called the "RFC index", which can also be
searched online.The specification documents of the Internet protocol suite, as defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and its steering group the IESG, are published as RFCs. Thus, the RFC publication process plays in important role in the Internet standards process
The RFC Editor function is funded by the Internet Society.
An example of one such RFC
RFC 950.The standard procedure for creating and identifying subnets.
One reason for the popularity of TCP/IP is that no one vendor owns it, unlike the IPX/SPX, DNA, SNA, or AppleTalk protocol suites, all of which are controlled by specific companies. TCP/IP
evolved in response to input from a wide variety of industry sources. Consequently, TCP/IP is the most open of the protocol suites and is supported by the widest variety of vendors. Virtually every brand of computing equipment now supports TCP/IP.
