Controlling the "Internet"...a Public Service Announcement
With the current popularity of the Internet, it's important to understand the difference between the terms "internet" and "Internet" (notice that one is capitalized and the other is not). The term "internet" means a collection of networks, whereas the term "Internet" refers to the internetworking of networks originally started by the ARPANET Internetting project. The Internet today has grown exponentially as compared to its original intent, and it has huge commercial business implications aside from the original military experiments conducted in the 1970s and 1980s.
Although the Internet has no specific ownership, support organizations and services exist to aid in its maintenance and growth. Following are key services and organizations that support the Internet.
InterNIC and NIC
InterNIC stands for Integrated Network Information Center. The InterNIC is a concept for an integrated network information center that was developed by several companies in cooperation with the U.S. Government, and is a registered service mark of the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIC (Network Information Center) provides certain services of the InterNIC including guidance and documentation for the Internet's use. For more information, see the InterNIC web site at the following location: www.internic.net/.
RFCs
RFCs (Request For Comments) document Internet engineering standards for the Internet community. The RFCs are the technical documentation used by vendors to create new technology for use on the Internet. RFCs are also great for understanding Internet technologies. You can obtain RFCs without charge. A good location to locate RFCs using the web is www.rfc-editor.org/.
IAB
The IAB (Internet Architecture Board) was originally called the Internet Activities Board when it was organized in 1983. The IAB publishes RFCs and is the oversight entity for the TCP/IP protocol suite. Additional information on the IAB can be found at www.iab.org/iab/.
ICANN
(Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) was formed in 1998 and is recognized by the U.S. Government as the coordinator for the Internet's DNS (Domain Name System) and IP address allocation, among other things. You can find additional information about ICANN at www.icann.org/.
Many people believe that the Internet will soon be under attack...taken under control by governments. Well...that has obviously already happened. The "Internet" is theirs...they own it. They don't just let us use it...we pay for it (IPOs). Sure we should assure we can use it as freely as possible; however, we should ALSO look for (create) an alternate "internet".
I'm sure some already exist. Perhaps some of you old school/hardcore techies can help us out.
Kindly,
Boru
