Standards 

ISOC's Standards and Technology Activities

Standards create, define, and expand the Internet

The Internet is built on technical standards, which allow devices, services, and applications to be interoperable across a wide and dispersed network of networks. Internet standards are developed by group of organisations which operate under the auspices of the Internet Society (ISOC).

ISOC is the organisational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), and the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) — the standards setting and research arms of the Internet community. These are open organisations, relying on transparent, bottom-up processes to build consensus. Thousands of people from around the world participate in the process and the standards they develop are free and accessible to everyone.

The Internet also relies on several other types of technical standards, developed by a range of other organisations. For example, the Internet makes extensive use of the telecommunications infrastructure standards developed by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU); hardware standards developed by bodies such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE); and software standards, such as those developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

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Standards and Technology Priorities

The purpose of the Standards and Technology work is to organize and lead the Internet Society's work in advancing the development and deployment of open standards, and promoting the collaborative development and operational management model.

Standards and Technology will do this by focusing on technology gaps and opportunities and enabling the appropriate actions to address them. Key areas include:

• Open Standards Process
  This activity focuses on ensuring that existing open standards processes are adequate for the continued health of the Internet. This includes supporting and enhancing existing standards efforts, promoting coordination between them, identifying gaps and ways to fill them, and maximizing the usability of open standards.
• Technology Reading Room
  As a resource for ISOC activities, as well as a contribution to the Internet technology community, the Internet Technology Reading Room is an organized resource of information concerning Internet technology — providing historical data, credible snapshots of current discussions, and more.
• Future Internet Technology
  This is specifically focused on pursuing and elaborating the results from GENI/FIND and other future Internet research programs. The goal is to help provide the bridge from the future research to the current engineering.