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A Concise Guide to the Major Internet Bodies
alex simonelis submitted a good summary of the major internet bodies. If you hunger to know the difference between ICANN, IETF, ISOC and the rest of the alphabet soup of the governing bodies that make our beloved internet possible, this is a great place to look. It covers 10 major organizations.
Or goatse.cx for that matter.
Who is this guy kidding? The major Internet bodies my eye!
Infuriate left and right
It's nice to know what each organistion does, but is there an article about how they actually do it?
For instance, how (pardon my ignorance) ICANN actually controls numbers and names, technically. Is there a mainframe of some sort that stores them? How does ICANN make changes?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
I don't think they can call this guide "concise" until they address these gaping holes...
Speaking of gaping holes, I think you're missing another major internet body yourself
I wonder if the lawyers for the IANA ever abbreviate their titles to IANAL. And I wonder if that ever confuses the heck out of people.
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
The article only discussed the major bodies for just the one internet. What about the other internets? Is there an ICANN2, IETF2, and ISOC2?
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
I'm a regular contributor to WTF, the most ubiquitous internet body.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
No one (and this article itself) has ever really objectively described the compromises/disputes between the old internet governance infrastructure and the increasingly corporate-dominated and somewhat authoritarian ICANN.
ICANN is supposed to have a standards pillar. However all internet standards are really developed by the IETF, published by the RFC Editor and adopted by the community the way that they have always been. (The exception being HTML/HTTP and its derivatives - the W3C is entirely corporate)
There's some mention here of the dispute over IANA. Back in the day, it was just Postel, and he demonstrated entire control over the root servers. But now it's really not clear who controls the root servers, allocates IP address ranges to the regional registries, and assigns other numbers. This stuff should be transparent!