Who Owns the Internet ?

Nobody - Internet is truly a global society today. Admittedly, the USA was the creator and developer of Internet in its initial days, as a medium to connect their defense labs in the advent of a nuclear attack. But today, most of the initiative is wrested from USA as a country and has gone to a group of fiercely independent professionals and groups who perhaps truly belong to world community.

However, no owner does not mean there is no governing body, organization or conventions. In fact, the behaviour of individuals in the Net are increasing governed by an agreed set of norms collectively known as netiquette.

The NSF (National Science Foundation, USA) continues to maintain the backbone of the network (which carries data at a rate of 45 million bits per second), but Internet protocol development is governed by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), and the InterNIC (Internet Network Information Center) administers the naming of computers and networks. The Internet Society (ISOC) is a voluntary membership organization whose purpose is to promote global information exchange through Internet technology. It appoints a council of elders, which is responsible for the technical management and direction of the Internet. The council of elders is a group of invited volunteers called the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). The IAB meets regularly to agree upon standards, allocation of resources, and defines the rules of how to assign addresses. The final organization responsible for the Internet is the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The IETF is another volunteer organization responsible for the operational and near term technical problems of the Internet.

There is no central authority or organization which collects fees for Internet use. Instead, everyone who uses the Internet pays for their part. Most networks get together and decide how to connect themselves and fund these interconnections. An educational facility, government agency, or corporation pays for their connection to some regional network which pays a national provider for its access. The process eventually filters down to you the end user, so everyone who uses the Internet has a hand in paying for it.

Internet Standards - The Internet is made possible through creation, testing and implementation of Internet Standards. These standards are developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force . The standards are then considered by the Internet Engineering Steering Group , with appeal to the Internet Architecture Board , and promulgated by the Internet Society as international standards. The RFC Editor is responsible for preparing and organizing the standards in their final form. The standards may be found at numerous sites distributed throughout the world. See, for example, the ds.internic.

At the applications level, the MIT World Wide Web Consortium plays the leading role in developing and promulgating WWW standards.

Vint Cerf has written a brief history of the relationship of the Internet Society with the Internet Engineering Task Force.