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.