Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
works. National and regional networks, however, have overlapping
capabilities in the United States and other countries. Thus, all net
works must cooperate with regard to standards, and no single net
work or provider has the ultimate control. Further, if one provider
curtailed its services, then others are in place to take over. Thus, no
one company or country can be considered as the owner of the
Internet; rather, ownership is shared among many entities, and re
sponsibilities are divided among participants.
Now that the Internet is an international entity, coordination of
the Internet is largely accomplished through the Internet Society
(ISOC). In particular, its Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) fo
cuses on various hardware matters, while its Internet Architecture
Board (IAB) defines the network's architecture—its backbones and
the networks attached to them. Information about each of these or
ganizations exists online—see, for example,
www.isoc.org
for the
home page of the Internet Society. This page, in turn, has links to
both the IETF and IAB.
Within a country, a government may designate certain agencies
or groups to control various standards, protocols, and agreements.
For example, in the United States, the U.S. government has desig
nated the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN) as having primary responsibility for specifying what
Internet name is assigned to whom and what port numbers are re
served for which use. (More about Web addresses shortly.) In other
countries, different groups may have similar responsibilities for
those areas. In some sense, one might argue that these committees
and agencies own or control their components of the Internet, but
those groups can function only within the constraints of interna
tional agreements and specified standards.
Despite the fact that no one specific company or organization
owns the Internet, connecting to it is not free. Both national and re
gional providers must maintain their networks, including cables,
computers (servers), routers, and all the other pieces that make up
the Internet. Connections between providers require cables, trans
mission lines, satellite links, and the like. Such infrastructure obvi
ously incurs considerable costs—for setting up initial equipment
