Who Runs the Internet? on Ricci Street's Port 80: Customhouse

There are no known public records of executive authority at any level. ...

The administrators of the DNS have typically performed quasi-legislative, executive, and judicial functions. No public proceedings or records are known to exist other than a few guidelines.

Who owns the Internet?

No one does. Everyone does. As a packet-switched network, it started in the fall of 1969 with four computers linked together because academic researchers like Douglas Engelbart at Stanford were curious about augmenting human intelligence, especially accurate memory. They cooperated for the common good.

The ARPA Network

1969

Node 1 UCLA August

Node 2 Stanford Research Institute (SRI) October

Node 3 University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) November

Node 4 University of Utah December

from the original back-of-the-envelope sketch on the left

Nothing much has changed except the number of computers and the technical rules, called protocols, by which the information is exchanged.

Who owns the Internet? Until recently, nobody. That's because, although the Internet was "Made in the U.S.A.," its unique design transformed it into a resource for innovation that anyone in the world could use. Today, however, courts and corporations are attempting to wall off portions of cyberspace. In so doing, they are destroying the Internet's potential to foster democracy and economic growth worldwide.

Who runs the Internet?

No one runs the Internet, either, in the sense that a machine or organization is run from a central authority.

Look again at the diagrams. The starburst network on the left has a central authority. The webbed network on the right doesn't.

No country runs the internet. No company, no elections, no board of directors. That's both the Internet's strength and its challenge. Politically, it's an anarchy.

More expansively, it's an open-source self-organizing, adaptive, many-to-many peer-to-peer international file-sharing, public collaborative agreement based on human goodwill, which means it's teetering on anarchy.

In technical terms, it runs on algorithms. In social terms, it's similar to the town commons, the plot of land set aside for everyone to use. The common wealth is a similar concept. I own a piece of land. Do I own the air above that land? How far above?

This collaboration is also based on technical standards. In addition to the larger standards for electricity and electrical devices, the Internet runs on protocols and computer languages that are free and shared by everyone, just as the grass and trees in the town commons. These protocols are overseen by a couple of self-appointed deliberative committees that have established processes for orderly change -- the antidote to anarchy and to the greed it could breed.

Learn more from Charles C. Botsford's How the Internet Runs slide and half-hour audio presentation.

Stratton Sclavos increasingly runs the Web. His company, Verisign, has erected cyberspace's largest toll booth and is now poised to extract a usage fee from just about everyone.

Why is the Internet "free"?

1) All of us -- at home and at work -- maintain our own computers and our own connection to the network. At home, I have five PCs and laptops in a network fed by a Verizon ADSL connection. In North Carolina, I'm renting server space from AIT. The computers cost real money. The two connections total a hundred and fifty dollars per month.

Instead, ask: Why has the phone company for so long foisted the tin-can model on us?

When the string between cans is longer, you have to shout louder. Thus, a call from Buffalo to Paris should cost a lot more than a call from Buffalo to New York, right? Wrong.

Remember physics class? Electricity travels through copper wire at about 2/3 the speed of light. The difference between Paris and New York is negligible, measured in milliseconds. A "long-distance" charge is, well, ... I'd better let you characterize that yourself. It doesn't do to anger the telephone company gods, does it? We just write our checks every month to keep them happy and well-fed.

Technical Standards

The World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the most authoritative committee because the Web is the most popular service on the Internet. W3C is housed at M.I.T. and is chaired by Tim Berners-Lee, who wrote HTTP ten years ago in Switzerland. He then gave it to the world. Say, "Thank you, Tim."

The Information Revolution: The Not-For-Dummies Guide to the History, Technology and Use of the World Wide Web
by J.R. Okin

With consent from CERN, Berners-Lee released the Web software (HTTP, HTML) into the public domain in April, 1993. The release of the software was necessary for the Web to sustain its grassroots following and appeal to corporations that were concerned about future license fees or mandated changes that might disrupt their use of the Web. It allowed anyone to use and develop the Web in any way they chose. (p. 50)

When CERN first looked at the Web and tried to evaluate its worth, it decided that charging for the Web software would probably not cover the administrative costs for the paperwork This was in 1991 and, while the original code and associated information were now accessible on the Internet, oversight of the Web and its future was unambiguously held by Berners-Lee and CERN. ...

Before 1993 ended, both CERN and Berners-Lee formally relinquished their ownership of the Web. By getting CERN to agree to freely release the code for the Web, and by deciding at the last minute not even to issue the code under the General Public License (GPL) of the Free Software Foundation, Berners-Lee managed to place the Web technology into the public domain. ... This simultaneously accommodated both commercial and non-commercial interests in the Web. It also helped to promote the global and unconstrained Web that Berners-Lee envisioned.

From that point on, ownership of the Web was not an issue. No one could claim ownership in any way, shape, or form. Leadership, on the other hand, was still vested in Berners-Lee. He took his leadership, along with his vision, with him when, in 1994, he joined Michael Dertouzous and MIT/LCS to become Director of the newly created W3C in Boston. (p. 105)

The father of the World Wide Web was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and said his revolutionary invention was the result of being in the right place at the right time. ...

While working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory near Geneva in the late 1980s, Berners-Lee developed the architecture of the Internet -- the Web system of servers and browsers -- which he distributed free of charge.

He has worked ever since to ensure the Web remains public domain.

"The Web must remain a universal medium open to all and not biasing the information it conveys," he said.

W3C members, from all over the world, must be organizations or companies. There is no individual membership. The W3C uses an open proposal --> comment --> recommendation process to evolve the standards for the free software that everyone agrees to use:

Hypertext Transport Protocol: HTTP
Hypertext Markup Language: HTML
Style Sheets: CSS, XSL
Document Object Model: DOM
Synchronized Multimedia: SMIL
Math: MathML
Graphics and voice standards, etc etc

The English that W3C uses tends to be numbing. I would recommend sites like Webmonkey, which explains and teaches the same material in clearer English.

These standards run on top of one other: Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), written by Vinton Cerf and maintained by The Internet Society. This standard, adopted on January 1, 1983, is similar to the standard gauge tracks that let the railroad industry flourish in the mid-1800s. Learn more about the Internet's plumbing, about how the infrastructure works and about packets. How big is each packet?

Until 1983, if you wanted to communicate with another user, you had to know the exact path to that user's computer files. Then a name server was developed at the University of Wisconsin, so that you could just type the Internet Protocol number. The next year, 1984, Jon Postel's Domain Name System (DNS) was introduced so that you could type the address in something approaching English, for example, RicciStreet.net, and the system would look up the IP number associated with it for you. Learn more about how domain name servers work.

Dynamic IP addresses are used by most dial-up ISPs and are dispensed by a DHCP (Dynamic Host Control Protocol) server that assigns a different address to your computer every time you connect. To see your current IP address, try this web site or do it yourself: choose Start, Run and enter winipcfg for Windows98 or ipconfig for Windows NT or 2000. Click OK. An IP Configuration box will pop up. It may be behind your other open windows and you may have to click the More Info button.

TCP/IP and DNS were the beginning of the Internet as we know it. January 1, 1983 is as good a single date as any for when the genie got out of the bottle. It would have been the best time for the music distribution industry to ask the courts to put a stop to this nonsense before it disrupted their business model. Almost twenty years later, it's probably too late.

What is unique to DNS isn't any peculiar quality but, rather, its historical position as the first "universal" addressing system - that is, a naming convention called upon (by conflicting interests) to integrate not just geographical references at every scale (from the nation to the apartment building) but also commercial language of every type (company names, trademarks, jingles, acronyms, services, commodities), proper names (groups, individuals), historical references (famous battles, movements, books, songs), hobbies and interests, categories and standards (concepts, specifications, proposals) ... the list goes on.

Domain Name Service acts as the backbone to the Internet. Like a fast, furious and omnipresent Vanna White, DNS is the key to the numbers behind the names and vice versa. It is the overarching entity that allows the Internet to function, a product of grand ideology and technical wizardry. And politics. Lots of politics.

The current dominant Internet Domain Name System (DNS) service is presently a pyramidal hierarchy of franchise authority and responsibilities established in 1985 under US DOD auspices through a function referred to as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) ....

It asserts the root authority at the top of the pyramid and has granted exclusive franchise authority for 250 Top Level Domains. Each of these frachisees may in turn grant subsidiary franchises. The arrangement is typically implemented through a root server system providing a reference service.

The current dominant DNS root server system is largely supported by the US government. Typically, hundreds of thousands of DNS servers operating throughout the Internet reference the root server system in conjunction with most user basic services such as EMail, WWW, etc. In addition, the domains are widely used for marketing and other public activities of businesses and individuals.

The five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) manage, distribute, and register public Internet Number Resources within their respective regions.

AfriNIC for Africa

APNIC for the Asia Pacific region

ARIN for North America

LACNIC for South America and the Caribbean

RIPE NCC for Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East

IANA delegates large ranges of Internet resources to the RIRs, which then allocate the resources within their regions.

The international framework in which policies for the administration and enhancement of the Internet's generic Domain Name System (DNS) are developed and deployed. These policies are developed in cooperation with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), who manages the root of the Domain Name System (DNS) to promote stability and robustness. For more information about the gTLD-MoU framework and related activities, see our FAQ.

A large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. It is open to any interested individual.

The Master List

The Internet doesn't know Ricci Street from pasta. It does, however, know Ricci Street's Internet Protocol number (IP#): 208.234.16.68. The Ricci Streets can come and go. 208.234.16.68 is here to stay. Currently, it is associated with riccistreet.net. Somewhere, there must be one master list of all the IP# / domain name associations.

What Is My IP Address? Ever wonder, 'what is my IP address?' This Web site will tell you the IP address you were assigned by your ISP when you connected or dialed in. It lasts for the duration of your session. If you have a cable or DSL connection, you keep the same IP address until you turn off your modem, which I never do.

Domain Name	Company	Day Activated (all 1985)
symbolics.com	Symbolics Technology, Inc.	March 15
bbn.com	BBN Corporation	April 24
cmu.edu	Carnegie-Mellon University	April 24
purdue.edu	Purdue University	April 24
rice.edu	Rice University	April 24
berkeley.edu	Univ of California at Berkeley	April 24
ucla.edu	Univ of California, Los Angeles	April 24
rutgers.edu	Rutgers University	April 24
mit.edu	Mass Institute Of Technology	May 23
think.com	Thinking Machines Corporation	May 24

Let's look at these network models again. One master list would obviously be in the center node of the network on the left. But the Internet is like the network on the right.

Way back in the 1980's, when you could put all the IP numbers onto a couple of sheets of paper, the master list could be sent around every so often for updates. Whoever kept the list would send a clean copy to everyone. As a hand-made list became impossible because of the number of addresses, the Federal government wanted a self-regulating but orderly process tied to its continued funding of Internet research through Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA, the classic "defense contractor") and later the National Science Foundation. A not-for-profit organization called Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) was formed in 1988 to coordinate the necessary central functions of the Internet, specifically the master list.

As the master list grew into the hundreds of thousands, the government contracted in 1993 with Network Solutions to keep the master list and to register Internet domain names such as RicciStreet.net. Every day, its list grows and every day, the list gets sent out to the Internet's name servers. Think of them as the nodes on the right-hand diagram above.

Server	Operator	Cities
A	VeriSign Global Registry Services	Herndon VA, US
B	Information Sciences Institute	Marina Del Rey CA, US
C	Cogent Communications	Herndon VA, US
D	University of Maryland	College Park MD, US
E	NASA Ames Research Center	Mountain View CA, US
F	Internet Software Consortium	Palo Alto CA, US; San Francisco CA, US; Madrid, ES; San Jose, CA, US; New York, NY, US; Hong Kong, HK
G	U.S. DOD NIC (Network Information Center)	Vienna VA, US
H	U.S. Army Research Lab	Aberdeen MD, US
I	Autonomica	Stockholm, SE
J	VeriSign Global Registry Services	Herndon VA, US
K	Reseaux IP Europeens - Network Coordination Centre	London, UK
L	Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers	Los Angeles CA, US
M	WIDE Project	Tokyo, JP

In 1994, the National Science Foundation, which had run the Internet backbone since the Defense Department separate military from civilian networks, awarded contracts for something new: four Network Access Points (NAPs) in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C. These NAPs would let a new class of Internet operators -- Internet Service Providers (ISPs) -- interconnect directly with each other to exchange traffic. That is, the Internet backbone network was given directly to private businesses. By the turn of the century, there were over 8,900 commercial ISPs listed at ISPWorld's registry.

By 1995, the number of registered addresses was getting so far out of hand that Network Solutions started charging $50 per year per registered domain name to maintain the list. Even then, they didn't bother to collect money owed them. The $50 that people sent voluntarily more than covered Network Solutions' operations, which was soon far larger than they had expected. Their contract ran out in 1998 about the time they registered their 2 millionth domain though they continue to function until a suitable replacement is found.

Continuing support of the U.S. Federal government is neither possible nor appropriate. The Internet is too big and it's international. It needs an international, self-regulating committee based on goodwill. It's not just a town commons anymore. It's the world's commons. It's not just a couple of families that have to share a cow pasture. It's a couple billion families who don't even speak the same language yet have to share something called cyberspace that we don't even know where it is.

Who's running that web site?

The WhoIs database is provided by Network Solutions, the company that keeps the master list of IP numbers and domain names. For example, enter RicciStreet.net. After you examine the results, go back and enter 204.238.16.68, which is Ricci Street's IP number. At the bottom of the results page, you'll see who my upstream provider is: Advanced Internet Technologies (AIT). If you return to the search form and enter aitcom.net, you'll see at the bottom of the results page who their upstream provider is.

The WhoIs service is especially useful when you're trying to track down the owners of a web site or the design shop or hosting service to which it got outsourced.

Got Root?

The root directory is the top directory (folder) in a file system. In an address, it's the farthest left, for example, the riccistreet directory that http://RicciStreet.net will give you access to. It is often indicated by a slash or slash dot: / or /.

Remember that file systems can be nested, so that there are networks within networks, webs within webs, and roots within roots. Behind the riccistreet/ root is the document root htdocs/ and the server root.

"Got root?" is asking whether you have access to the root of whatever file system the question is asked about.

Who got the Internet's root?

The Domain Name System is a distributed hierarchical database of resource records that permit (among other things) the translation of hostnames into IP addresses and vice versa. The root of this hierarchy is anchored on 13 domain name servers scattered across the globe.

"Resource records" refers to what I call the master list above. In other words, there's a master list that gets updated once a day on a dozen other servers. Thus, if all but one of them got destroyed at the same time by natural catastrophe or cyberterrorism, that lone survivor would ensure the continuation of the Internet.

Governing Cyberspace: Where is James Madison when we need him?
by David Post
Webposted on June 6, 1999

Who is in charge of the root server?

How does the operator of the root server decide which machines are the "authorized" domain servers for EDU, or COM, or ORG, or any of the other top-level domains?

Who controls those machines (and the database of names and addresses contained in them)?

And how is this whole scheme enforced? That is, what makes the root server "the" root server?

Why do the many thousands of Internet Service Providers, operating the many thousands of DNS servers worldwide, all use the same root server?

The Internet Software Consortium is proud to operate one of 13 root DNS servers as a public service to the Internet. The ISC has operated F.root-servers.net for the IANA since 1993. F answers more than 272 million DNS queries per day, making it one of the busiest DNS servers in the world. In fact, it is often the busiest root nameserver on the Internet.

F is a virtual server made up of multiple (currently two) Compaq AlphaServers, donated to us by Compaq's Western Research Laboratory. Each server is a Compaq ES40 AlphaServer with 4 500mhz CPUs and 8Gig of RAM, and runs ISC BIND 8.3.0 as its DNS server.

The servers are hosted at PAIX.net, Inc. in Palo Alto, California, and are connected to the Internet via fdx Fast Ethernet connections, which are provided by MIBH.

A coalition of parties working together to help effect a truly international, independent, autonomous Internet institutional environment where diverse bodies - corporate, non-profit, and governmental - cooperate but retain their own identity and independence, working together toward achieving a robust, open, competitive marketplace at all levels.

ICANN

We are in the process of an awkward and very public transition to The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a private, not-for-profit corporation that will have responsibility for allocating Internet addresses and managing the master list: the domain name system and the root server system.

The technical aspect of ICANN's job is almost trivial. The political aspect is so fraught with danger that it may be impossible.

Let's pretend | It's 1500 and you live in Madrid. The king of Spain has offered you, in exchange for all your worldly possessions, official title to every acre of the godforsaken, savage-ridden land we now call North America. You and your descendents would forever own all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Bad deal, you say?

Well, to a lot of people, at least that much is at stake whenever ICANN makes a decision. So guess what? Hardly anyone likes any of their decisions.

Core Values

1. Preserve and enhance the operational stability, reliability, security, and global interoperability of the Internet.

2. Respect the creativity and innovation made possible by the Internet by limiting ICANN's activities to those matters within ICANN's mission requiring or significantly benefiting from global coordination.

3. To the extent feasible, delegate coordination functions to responsible entities that reflect the balance of interests of affected parties.

4. Seek and support broad, informed participation reflecting the functional, geographic, and cultural diversity of the Internet, at all levels of policy development and decision-making.

5. Where feasible, depend on market mechanisms to promote and sustain a competitive environment.

The NGO and Academic ICANN Study (NAIS) is an international project to review the nature of public representation in the Internet's domain name management organization, ICANN.

While ICANN will gain the collective wisdom of IANA's fifteen years' experience, here's the part that scares the control-seekers:

The Internet community provides the ultimate authority.

So who's "the Internet community"? You and me. We use the Internet to get information, we use it to buy plane tickets, and our children use it to talk to their friends.

Let Gregory R. Gromov take you on a terrific romp through The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History. For more, the Internet Society has good, if sometimes dated, links to information about the history of the Internet. Brad Myers at Carnegie Mellon maintains the Computer Almanac, a collection of interesting and useful numbers about the Internet.

In a practical way, the Internet is also the infrastructure providers: the Internet service providers, the phone company, the cable TV company, and all the companies that manufacture the PCs and routers and Ethernet hubs that make up the Internet. Those companies make the decisions that most affect our day-to-day use.

Join The Internet Society and keep abreast of how the Internet is developing: Who's working on what? What major issues are being addressed by whom? Much of this information is reported on Web sites such as InfoWorld. You can subscribe to email lists that will keep you updated. Other ideas:

Let your local or national legislators and educators know how you feel about the Internet and public issues such as free speech, the right-to-privacy, and public access to information.

Take part in public discussions about the Internet in schools, on Internet forums, and in other media.

Buy products and services from companies you feel are doing a good job of selling and informing on the Internet.

Create your own Web pages and exchange links with other sites. Become part of the Web's content and structure.

I'd recommend learning more about the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They are leading the fight to protect free speech on the Internet.

According to new academic research published in Nature magazine, the Internet remains one of the most reliable ways to do business, but a virtual Achilles' heel leaves it vulnerable to sophisticated attacks that could all but shut it down.


concepts and buzzwords for exploring webs


Customhouse concepts and buzzwords	Charthouse trends and currents	Boardwalk people and communities
Lighthouse information and research	Shoreline issues and policies	Docks systems and processes


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modified: June 21, 2004 by Douglas Anderson http://RicciStreet.net/port80/customhouse/whorunsnet.htm

. (dot)	Root Domain
ARPA	Advanced Projects Research Agency
COM	Commercial
EDU	Education
GOV	Government (US Federal)
MIL	Military (US)
NET	Network
ORG	Organization