QUESTIONS-AND-ANSWERS                                   1/21/92

			Internet Society Q/A


Date: Wed, 27 Nov 91 20:01:47 -0500
Subject: More on the Internet Society
From: Vint Cerf <vcerf@nri.reston.va.us>

Let me try to offer a little perspective on the Internet Society objectives,
organizational interests, and the Internet community. Your reactions would
be most welcome.

First, there has been a growing sense that the millions of people who are
involved with the Internet on a daily basis form a new kind of community
which has not really existed on such a large scale before. The diversity
of this community is quite remarkable. There are people who carry out
computer and communications research together with people who make products
or sell communications services vital to Internet opreation and people who
simply apply the technology and services to their problems. The Internet
Society, as a professional membership organization for individuals, is
intended to give some context for all these people who share a common
interest: the health, well-being and continued growth and evolution of
the Internet.

We hope that the Society will offer opportunities to provide educational
experiences for people new to the system and interested in learning what
can be done with it. The annual conference gives us one means of sharing
knowledge and enthusiasm for the Internet on an international basis, for
example. We hope that the Newsletter will be another tool in that regard.

The Society anticipates that it will integrate into its operation the
IAB, IETF and IRTF functions, leaving them largely intact, but also
imbuing them with additional support from the Internet Society
Secretariat. Forming a real organization also makes it easier for
the IAB to establish formal liaison with other national or international
standards bodies.

It is also expected that the Internet Society will try to stimulate
new applications for the Internet and provide its members with information
about new ways to participate in the life of the community. For example,
several national and international disaster relief coordination groups
have chosen to use the Internet for communications services. Perhaps
Internet Society members will be able to volunteer to assist such groups.

There are some important infrastructure functions which the Society
will undertake to support - directly or indirectly. For instance,
the block allocation of IP address space to delegated network and host
registries (one of the Internet Assigned Number Authority functions);
the assignment of domain name space allocation responsibilities;
publication of RFCs (the RFC Editor will continue to function as
part of the IAB which, in turn, will be a part of the Internet Society
organization. The Society will also work with organizations such as
the CERT at the Software Engineering Institute and the FIRST group
(international security response teams) to help Internet users
organize their systems to provide better network and host security.

The Society is also expected to function as the Internet Certificate
Authority (ICA) which will register Policy Certificate Authorities
for Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM).

These various functions, in addition to newsletters, journals,
conferences and standards activities, are benefits to individual
and to corporate members. In the latter case, growth of the
Society serves to increase the potential market for Internet
products and services.

Finally, it is hoped that the Internet Society can become a
catalyst for the spread of multiprotocol internetworking -
particularly in connection with the introduction and spread
of OSI-protocols and services adjacent to the existing and
widely-used TCP/IP offerings.

I hope this brief response is helpful to you, but please feel
free to raise additional questions or observations; your input
is valued.

Vint Cerf