Internet Info 1994 March/Internet Info CD-ROM (Walnut Creek) (March 1994).iso/inet/isoc/abstract.txt

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4/26/93

                      INTERNET SOCIETY


                         Abstract


The purpose of this document is to provide a brief description of the
Internet Society and its goals and objectives. It functions as a professional
society to facilitate, support and promote the evolution and growth of the
Internet as a global research communications infrastructure. The
suggestions and recommendations of all parties interested in the Internet
are solicited to assist in making the Internet Society robust, productive and
structured to meet the needs of its members.

Internet Society

The Internet is a collection of cooperating, interconnected, multiprotocol
networks which supports international collaboration among thousands of
organizations.  Internet Society seeks to foster the voluntary interconnection
of computer networks into a global research, development, and information
infrastructure. The Internet Society does not operate the Internet.  Internet
operation continues to be a collaborative activity which the Society seeks
to facilitate. The Society provides assistance and support to groups and
organizations involved in the use, operation and evolution of the Internet.
It provides support for forums in which technical and operational questions
can be discussed and provide mechanisms through which interested parties
can be informed and educated about the Internet, its function, use,
operation and the interests of its constituents.


Membership

Internet Society is a professional membership organization with voting
individual members and non-voting institutional members.  There are
several classes of institutional members. The society publishes a newsletter
on a regular basis and holds an annual meeting to which all members and
other interested parties are invited.  The topics of the annual meeting vary,
but focus on current research in networking, Internet functionality and
growth, and other interests of the Society constituency.

Membership dues vary according to class of membership. The amounts of
these dues and the basis on which they are set are determined by the
Board of Trustees of the Society and may be revised from time to time as
provided in the By-Laws.


Charter

The Society is a non-profit organization and operated for academic,
educational, charitable and scientific purposes among which are:

   A. To facilitate and support the technical evolution of the Internet as
      a research and education infrastructure and to stimulate
      involvement of the academic, scientific and engineering
      communities, among others in the evolution of the Internet.

   B. To educate the academic and scientific communities and the public
      concerning the technology, use and application of the Internet.

   C. To promote scientific and educational applications of Internet
      technology for the benefit of educational institutions at all grade
      levels, industry and the public at large.

   D. To provide a forum for exploration of new Internet applications
      and to foster collaboration among organizations in their operation
      and use of the Internet.

Activities of the Society

1. Support for Internet Technical Evolution

The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) has been concerned with the
development and evolution of architectures supporting the use of multiple
protocols in a networked environment. The Internet Society has
incorporated the IAB and its functions into the operation of the Internet
Society. The Internet Society works with other interested organizations to
support and assist efforts to evolve the multiprotocol Internet. The Internet
Society looks to the Internet Engineering and Research Task Forces to
stimulate networking research and facilitate the evolution of the TCP/IP
protocol suite and the integration of new protocol suites into the Internet
architecture. The Internet Society works actively with parties and
organizations interested in fostering improvement in the utility of the
Internet for its constituent users.


2. Meetings and Conferences

Internet Society convenes an annual meeting ("INET") and organizes and
facilitates workshops and symposia, jointly with other organizations where
appropriate, on specific topics of interest to the Society membership. The
annual meeting addresses issues of global and regional importance to the
evolution and growth of the Internet.


3. Information and Infrastructure Services

The Internet Society publishes the quarterly Internet Society News
providing members with information about the international activities of
Internet constituents. In addition, the Society also provides assistance to
and support for organizations responsible for maintaining the databases
crucial to Internet function (e.g. the Domain Name System, X.500 Directory
Services, etc.) and organizations concerned with the security of the Internet
(e.g. the Software Engineering Institute Computer Emergency Response
Team (CERT)). The Society assists in the development of educational,
advisory and informative materials of use to Society members. Where
appropriate, the Society organizes or supports activities which aid in the
coordination among the organizations operating components of the Internet.

The Society refers members to appropriate parties involved in operating the
various parts of the Internet where they may be helpful with specific
questions. Where possible, the Society seeks to provide access to its
information on-line, but also offers hard copy and, perhaps eventually,
CD-ROM-based information resources.


Plans

The initial organizers of the Internet Society include the Corporation for
National Research Initiatives (CNRI), EDUCOM, Reseaux Associees pour
la Recherche Europeenne (RARE) and the Internet Architecture Board.
Computer networking has become a critical infrastructure for the research
and development community and has the potential to become the basis for
world-wide collaboration and cooperation in every field of human endeavor.
The Internet Society seeks to solidify, enhance and encourage further
international collaborative networking. Individuals joining the Society
during its formation have received special recognition as Society pioneers
and have been instrumental in shaping the early agenda of Society
activities. Institutional members are represented in the Advisory Council
of the Internet Society where their advice and counsel is sought to refine
Internet Society objectives and activities.


                    APPENDIX


   A Brief History of the Internet and Related Networks


Introduction

In 1973, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA -
now ARPA) initiated a research program to investigate techniques and
technologies for interlinking packet networks of various kinds. The objective
was to develop communication protocols which would allow networked
computers to communicate transparently across multiple, linked packet
networks. This was called the Internetting project and the system of
networks which emerged from the research was known as the "Internet."
The system of protocols which was developed over the course of this
research effort became known as the TCP/IP Protocol Suite, after the two
initial protocols developed: Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and
Internet Protocol (IP).

In 1986, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) initiated the
development of the NSFNET which, today, provides a major backbone
communication service for the Internet. With its 45 megabit per second
facilities, the NSFNET carries on the order of 12 billion packets per month
between the networks it links. The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Department of Energy contributed
additional backbone facilities in the form of the NSINET and ESNET
respectively. In Europe, major international backbones such as
NORDUNET, EBONE, EuropaNet and others provide connectivity to over
three hundred thousand computers on a large number of networks.
Commercial network providers in the U.S. and Europe are beginning to
offer Internet backbone and access support on a competitive basis to any
interested parties.

"Regional" support for the Internet is provided by various consortium
networks and "local" support is provided through each of the research and
educational institutions. Within the United States, much of this support has
come from the federal and state governments, but a considerable
contribution has been made by industry. In Europe and elsewhere, support
arises from cooperative international efforts and through national research
organizations. During the course of its evolution, particularly after 1989,
the Internet system began to integrate support for other protocol suites into
its basic networking fabric. The present emphasis in the system is on
multiprotocol interworking, and in particular, with the integration of the
Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocols into the architecture.

Both public domain and commercial implementations of the roughly 100
protocols of TCP/IP protocol suite became available in the 1980's. During
the early 1990's, OSI protocol implementations also became available and,
by the end of 1992, the Internet had grown to include some 11,000
networks in over seventy countries, serving over 1,700,000 host computers
used by over 5,000,000 people.

A great deal of support for the Internet community has come from the U.S.
Federal Government, since the Internet was originally part of a
federally-funded research program and, subsequently, has become a major
part of the U.S. research infrastructure. During the late 1980's, however,
the population of Internet users and network constituents expanded
internationally and began to include commercial facilities. Indeed, the bulk
of the system today is made up of private networking facilities in
educational and research institutions, businesses and in government
organizations across the globe.

The Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental Networking (CCIRN),
which was organized by the U.S. Federal Networking Council (FNC) and
the European Reseaux Associees pour la Recherche Europeenne (RARE),
plays an important role in the coordination of plans for government-
sponsored research networking. CCIRN efforts have been a stimulus for the
support of international cooperation in the Internet environment.  Reseau
IP Europeenne (RIPE) has mounted a very successful grass-roots effort in
Europe to extend Internet in Europe.



Internet Technical Evolution

Over its fifteen year history, the Internet has functioned as a collaboration
among cooperating parties. Certain key functions have been critical for its
operation, not the least of which is the specification of the protocols by
which the components of the system operate. These were originally
developed in the DARPA research program mentioned above, but in the last
five or six years, this work has been undertaken on a wider basis with
support from Government agencies in many countries, industry and the
academic community. The Internet Activities Board (recently re-named the
Internet Architecture Board) was created in 1983 to guide the evolution of
the TCP/IP Protocol Suite and to provide research advice to the Internet
community.

During the course of its existence, the IAB has reorganized several times.
It now has two primary components: the Internet Engineering Task Force
and the Internet Research Task Force. The former has primary
responsibility for further evolution of the TCP/IP protocol suite, its
standardization, and the integration of other protocols into Internet
operation (e.g. the Open Systems Interconnection protocols). The Internet
Research Task Force continues to organize and explore advanced concepts
in networking under the guidance of the Internet Architecture Board and
with support from various research sponsoring agencies.

A secretariat has been created to manage the day-to-day function of the
Internet Architecture Board and Internet Engineering Task Force. IETF
meets three times a year in plenary and its approximately 80 working
groups convene at intermediate times by electronic mail, teleconferencing
and at face-to-face meetings. The IAB meets quarterly face-to-face or by
videoconference and at intervening times by telephone, electronic mail and
computer-mediated conferences.

Two other functions are critical to Internet function:  Publication of
documents describing the Internet and the assignment and recording of
various identifiers needed for protocol operation. Throughout the
development of the Internet, its protocols and other aspects of its operation
have been documented first in a series of documents called Internet
Experiment Notes and, later, in a series of documents called Requests for
Comment (RFCs). The latter were used initially to document the protocols
of the first packet switching network developed by DARPA, the ARPANET,
beginning in 1969, and have become the principal archive of information
about the Internet. At present, the publication function is provided by an
RFC editor.

The recording of identifiers is provided by the Internet Assigned Numbers
Authority (IANA) who has delegated one part of this responsibility to an
Internet Registry which acts as a central repository for Internet information
and which provides central allocation of network and autonomous system
identifiers, in some cases to subsidiary registries located in various
countries. The Internet Registry (IR) also provides central maintenance of
the Domain Name System (DNS) root database which points to subsidiary
distributed DNS servers replicated throughout the Internet. The DNS
distributed database is used, inter alia, to associate host and network
names with their Internet addresses and is critical to the operation of the
higher level TCP/IP protocols including electronic mail.

There are a number of Network Information Centers (NICs) located
throughout the Internet to serve its users with documentation, guidance,
advice and assistance. As the Internet continues to grow internationally,
the need for high quality NIC functions increases. Although the initial
community of users of the Internet were drawn from the ranks of computer
science and engineering, its users now comprise a wide range of disciplines
in the sciences, arts, letters, business, military and government
administration.



Related Networks

In 1980-81, two other networking projects, BITNET and CSNET, were
initiated. BITNET adopted the IBM RSCS protocol suite and featured direct
leased line connections between participating sites. Most of the original
BITNET connections linked IBM mainframes in university data centers.
This rapidly changed as protocol implementations became available for
other machines. From the beginning, BITNET has been multi-disciplinary
in nature with users in all academic areas. It has also provided a number
of unique services to its users (e.g., LISTSERV). Today, BITNET and its
parallel networks in other parts of the world (e.g., EARN in Europe) have
several thousand participating sites. In recent years, BITNET has
established a backbone which uses the TCP/IP protocols with RSCS-based
applications running above TCP.

CSNET was initially funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to
provide networking for university, industry and government computer
science research groups. CSNET used the Phonenet MMDF protocol for
telephone-based electronic mail relaying and, in addition, pioneered the first
use of TCP/IP over X.25 using commercial public data networks. The
CSNET name server provided an early example of a white pages directory
service and this software is still in use at numerous sites. At its peak,
CSNET had approximately 200 participating sites and international
connections to approximately fifteen countries.

In 1987, BITNET and CSNET merged to form the Corporation for Research
and Educational Networking (CREN). In the Fall of 1991, CSNET service
was discontinued having fulfilled its important early role in the provision
of academic networking service. A key feature of CREN is that its
operational costs are fully met through dues paid by its member
organizations.