Classroom Companion: Business

15.2.4 
 Internet Society
The Internet Society is an American nonprofit organization in charge of promot-
ing the standardization and policies of the Internet. The organization also has 
several offices outside the USA (e.g., in Geneva and Brussels to be close to both the 
UN policy group on information technology issues and the political and techno-
logical power centers of Europe). The organization has no legal influence on the 
ICT evolution. On the other hand, the informal influence is enormous.
15.2 · Standards Organizations

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The Internet Society is the home for several legally informal standardization 
bodies, the most important of which are:
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The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is in charge of developing and pro-
moting Internet standards. There is no formal membership of the organization, 
and anyone may contribute to the work by issuing Requests for Comments (RFCs) 
which may contain amendments or additions to existing standards or proposals for 
completely new standards. The proposal may be accepted by the Internet Engineer-
ing Steering Group and becoming a new Internet standard. Even so, it may be 
rejected or ignored by manufacturers and Internet providers and never be imple-
mented. Being so loosely organized, the Internet may evolve in an unplanned and 
haphazardly way. This has so far been the major forte of the Internet.
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The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) is an informal advisory group in charge 
of inducing some degree of consistency on the evolution of the Internet, among 
others by sorting out RFCs that may become useful additions to the Internet 
technology. This induces some direction to the evolution of the Internet.
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The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) is the forum that finally 
endorses new Internet standards.
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The final Internet standards are also published as RFCs. Free access for down-
loading of all RFCs is available via the homepage of the Internet Society.
Note that ITU plays no important role in the standardization of the Internet. On 
the other hand, 3GPP is playing a more and more important role, in particular, in 
the development of the Internet of Things.