How does the Internet work? - The Tao of Computing - page 299

You can find more information on the early history of the Internet
through the Internet Society, including “A Brief History of the
Internet” by Leiner et al., www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml.
How is the Internet organized at the global level?
Because the DoD and NSF operate within the United States,
their decisions formally apply to networks only within that context.
However, because the Internet began in the United States, the NSF
and DoD's policies and approaches have had a major impact on net
working in other countries as well. To expand somewhat, each
country has the power to determine companies and service
providers for national, regional, and local networking within that
country. However, to enable networking communications to take
place among countries, any country involved with the Internet must
follow consistent standards. Thus, various international committees
oversee standards, and interactions from one country's network(s)
to networks in other countries may be based on negotiated con
tracts and agreements.
Overall, one might consider the model of NAPs and ISPs as now
applying worldwide, where NAPs from various countries provide
toplevel service and connectivity for a type of network backbone.
Then within countries or regions, ISPs connect individuals, groups,
and companies to the NAPs.
Who owns the Internet?
As the discussion of the Internet's history suggests, ownership of
the Internet has evolved over the years. At the start, one might ar
gue that the U.S. Department of Defense or the National Science
Foundation owned the Internet, because those agencies provided
primary funding. Ownership was even more clear with private net
works, such as MCI Mail or CompuServe, because one company
controlled and ran each network.
With privatization and internationalization, however, the term
ownership today is misleading. The United States and other coun
tries who host NAPs could be viewed as owning parts of the back
bone or main interconnection points of the Internet. Also, one could
consider regional or local ISPs as owning segments of regional net