| The
Internet
is a wild and unruly place. When people talk about Internet
governance, the conversation is normally related to
IP allocation
and domain name management, rather than censorship or control. The
Internet actually is tightly managed with regards to network
allocation. This article will clear up those mysterious
organizational acronyms and explain what their purpose really is.
ICANN is
the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers. It is based in California, and is
responsible for oversight. ICANN oversees, as the name implies,
tasks relating to IP address and domain name assignment. Remember
when someone decided that each country should have a 2-letter
top-level domain? That was ICANN. The daily oversight of assigning
IP addresses continues to be handled by IANA. (More on IANA in a
second.) ICANN is a regulatory body, and it was created as a
non-profit to take control away from the U.S. government, which
relinquished it voluntarily.
IANA is the
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.
It was in the game before ICANN was created in late 1998. IANA
oversees the real IP and domain name management, as well as
root-level DNS operations. IANA was founded and run by Jon Postel
until the formation of ICANN, and Postel's death shortly thereafter.
He is the father of the Internet, without question. |
Key Terms To
Understanding Internet Governance:
Internet
A global network connecting millions of computers.
ICANN
Short for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
IANA
Short for Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.
TLD
Short for top-level domain, and refers to the suffix attached to
Internet domain names.
ccTLD
Short for country code Top-Level Domain. |
IANA manages IP delegation by assigning a set
of numbers to Regional Internet Registries, or
RIRs. These RIRs will then delegate, from their assigned IP
addresses, IPs to very large Internet service providers. You're probably
heard of some of them, the list is:
- ARIN (American Registry for Internet
Numbers): North America
- APNIC (Asia-Pacific Network Information
Centre): Asia and the Pacific
- RIPE NCC (RIPE Network Coordination
Centre): Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East
- LACNIC (Latin American and Caribbean
Internet Address Registry): Latin America and the Caribbean
- AfriNIC (African Network Information
Centre): Africa
Representatives of these five organizations
sometimes meet and discuss RIR business cooperatively, and call themselves
the NRO, or Number Resource Organization.
RIRs also provide domain name registration services, and delegate them to
companies, called registrars. RIRs also deal with ASN (Autonomous System
Number) allocation and management. An ASN defines an organization, or part
of one, and this is the number that's used to route traffic on the Internet.
Back to domain names, since that's a frequent
source of confusion for many people, here's a brief description of how
domain registration works:
There are the
top-level domains (TLDs),
such as .net, .com, and .org. These common TLDs are called generic, or gTLD
names. ICANN will accredit certain companies to allow them to become
registrars, which means they can sell domain names. Network Solutions, a
private company, was the original registrar. At that time, there was no
concept of having other registrars; everyone just went to NSI. They
controlled the gTLD names, and were the actual registry for them. As a
result of long legal battles in the late 1990s all registries are now
required to share information and support multiple registrars. The Shared
Registration System (SRS) was opened in 1999, and
to this day is managed by ICANN. Every registrar uses the SRS, and domain
name sales don't generally collide any more.
IANA also oversees domain name operations,
which involves acting as a liaison between the root DNS server operators, as
well as the top-level domain operations. IANA also deals with protocols,
such as http, to the extent of conferring with the IETF to develop policies
about which protocols should work Internet-wide.
Don't worry; we'll leave no acronym
undefined. The IETF
is the Internet Engineering Task Force.
It develops Internet standards and protocols, such as
TCP. Everything
developed under the IETF is done in its own working group. These are open
forums that work mostly through mailing lists, and anyone is welcome to
participate. New ideas come in the form of an
RFC, or Request
for Comments. The finalized documents are actually the
RFCs, and the really fresh ideas appear on the IETF's FTP site under
"in-notes." After a working group churns out an RFC, it is revered
worldwide, ignored, or hated. People always quote RFC document numbers,
starting such flame wars as "your mail server isn't RFC-compliant." To
assure that the Internet, and the applications that use it, function
properly when implemented by disparate groups of people, RFC standards are
supposed to be followed.
The IETF itself falls under the
Internet
Society (ISOC), which oversees the
Internet Architecture Board (IAB). The IAB is a committee whose main
purpose is to comment on, and act as a liaison for, the IETF and IRTF
(Internet Research Task Force).
The previously mentioned
ccTLDs (country
code top-level domains, like .us) were actually defined by another standards
body, called the ISO.
The International Organization for Standardization (yes, they screwed up the
acronym) has been around for much longer than the Internet. It deals with
everything from toasters and paper sizes to Internet issues. Well, it tried
to deal with Internet issues. Long ago, the ISO attempted to create a set of
standards that should be used for network communication. They called this
the Open Systems Interconnect, or
OSI model. Vendors
fought, blood was drawn, and the end result wasn't pretty.
The main players that you'll hear about in
the news are generally ICANN, IANA, and the IETF. And VeriSign, which
acquired NAI, and now controls certificates as well as being the second
largest registrar.
|
Did You Know...
- ICANN is always under fire,
especially when people propose adding new and controversial
TLDs.
- IANA manages IP addresses,
and assigns them to RIRs.
- The IETF, overseen by the
IAB, generates most of the new protocols and standards that
are used on the Internet.
|
~ By Charlie Schluting
This article originally appeared on
Enterprise Networking Planet
as a part of the Networking 101 series.
Last updated: April 28, 2006
Understanding IP Addresses 
Before covering subnetting in the next
Networking 101 installment, we'd like to thoroughly explore IP addresses in
their primal form. This is crucial to understanding subnets.
Understanding Subnets and CIDR
Welcome to the second installment of
Networking 101. This time around we'll learn about subnets and CIDR, hopefully
in a more manageable manner than some books present it.
Subnets Realized (Including IPv6)
An oft-asked question in networking classes
is "why can't we just put everyone on the same subnet and stop worrying about
routing?"
The OSI Reference Model — Understanding Layers
It is time to take a trip up the OSI Reference Model, and learn what this
mysterious thing is all about. The network stack is of great significance, but
not so much that it's the first thing you should learn.
Understanding Spanning Tree
The much anticipated spanning tree edition of Networking 101 has finally
arrived. Yes, you too can have a network that survives multiple exploding
switches. Read on.
Networking 101: Understanding (and Using) ICMP
Some attention needs to be paid to the most misunderstood protocol: ICMP.
Managers and administrators alike should understand what ICMP is really used for
if they plan on making firewall policy decisions, and administrators can use
ICMP knowledge to fully understand routing issues.
Understanding TCP, the Protocol
TCP is used everywhere, and understanding how TCP operates enables network and
systems administrators to properly troubleshoot network communication issues.
TCP In More Depth
We said that TCP gets "connected" before any data can be sent. To make that
work, the side that initiates a TCP connection will send a SYN (remember the
Flags field) packet first. |
