The Internet Society (ISOC) is an American nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 1992 with local chapters around the world. Its mission is "to promote the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world." It has offices in
Reston, Virginia, U.S., and
Geneva
, neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier
, website = https://www.geneve.ch/
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...
, Switzerland.
Organization
The Internet Society has regional bureaus worldwide,
composed of chapters, organizational members,
and, as of July 2020, more than 70,000 individual members.
The Internet Society has a staff of more than 100 and was governed by a
board of trustees, whose members are appointed or elected by the society's chapters, organization members, and the
Internet Engineering Task Force
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...
(IETF).
The IETF comprised the Internet Society's volunteer base.
Its leadership includes Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Ted Hardie; and President and CEO, Andrew Sullivan.
The Internet Society created the
Public Interest Registry
Public Interest Registry is a not-for-profit based in Reston, Virginia, created by the Internet Society in 2002 to manage the .ORG top-level domain. It took over operation of .ORG in January 2003 and launched the .NGO and .ONG top-level domains in ...
(PIR),
launched the
Internet Hall of Fame
The Internet Hall of Fame is an honorary lifetime achievement award administered by the Internet Society (ISOC) in recognition of individuals who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the Internet. ,
and served as the organizational home of the IETF.
The Internet Society Foundation was created in 2017 as its independent philanthropic arm,
which awarded grants to organizations.
History
In 1991, the
NSF
NSF may stand for:
Political organizations
*National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party
*NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party
*National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political gr ...
contract with the
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
The Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), based in Reston, Virginia, is a non-profit organization founded in 1986 by Robert E. Kahn as an "activities center around strategic development of network-based information technologies", in ...
(CNRI) to operate the
Internet Engineering Task Force
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...
(IETF) expired. The then
Internet Activities Board (IAB) sought to create a non-profit institution which could take over the role. In 1992
Vint Cerf
Vinton Gray Cerf (; born June 23, 1943) is an American Internet pioneer and is recognized as one of " the fathers of the Internet", sharing this title with TCP/IP co-developer Bob Kahn. He has received honorary degrees and awards that include ...
,
Bob Kahn
Robert Elliot Kahn (born December 23, 1938) is an American electrical engineer who, along with Vint Cerf, first proposed the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), the fundamental communication protocols at the hea ...
and Lyman Chapin announced the formation of the Internet Society as "a professional society to facilitate, support, and promote the evolution and growth of the Internet as a global research communications infrastructure," which would incorporate the IAB, the IETF, and the
Internet Research Task Force
The Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) is an organization, overseen by the Internet Architecture Board, that focuses on longer-term research issues related to the Internet. A parallel organization, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), fo ...
(IRTF), plus the organization of the annual INET meetings. This arrangement was formalized in
RFC1602 in 1993.
In 1999, after
Jon Postel's death, ISOC established the
Jonathan B. Postel Service Award. The award has been presented every year since 1999 by the Internet Society to "honor a person who has made outstanding contributions in service to the data communications community."
By mid-2000, the Internet Society's finances became precarious, and several individuals and organizations stepped forward to fill the gap. Until 2001, there were also trustees elected by individual members of the Internet Society. Those elections were "suspended" in 2001. This was ostensibly done as a fiscal measure due to the perception that the elections were too expensive for the precarious financial state of the organization. In later Bylaw revisions, the concept of individual member-selected trustees went from "suspended" to being deleted altogether
In late 2001, leaders from
Afilias
Afilias, Inc. is a US corporation that is the registry operator of the .info, .mobi and .pro top-level domain, service provider for registry operators of .org, .ngo, .lgbt, .asia, .aero, and a provider of domain name registry services for countri ...
(a domain name registry) approached the Internet Society CEO Lynn St.Amour, to propose a novel partnership to jointly bid for the .org registry. In this model, the Internet Society would become the new home of .org, and all technical and service functions would be managed by Afilias. Afilias would pay for all bid expenses and would contribute towards the Internet Society payroll while the bid was under consideration by ICANN. The Internet Society Board approved this proposal at their Board meeting in 2001.
In 2002 ISOC successfully bid for the
.org
The domain name .org is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) of the Domain Name System (DNS) used on the Internet. The name is truncated from ''organization''. It was one of the original domains established in 1985, and has been operated by th ...
registry and formed the
Public Interest Registry
Public Interest Registry is a not-for-profit based in Reston, Virginia, created by the Internet Society in 2002 to manage the .ORG top-level domain. It took over operation of .ORG in January 2003 and launched the .NGO and .ONG top-level domains in ...
(PIR), to manage and operate it.
In 2010, ISOC launched its first
community network
A community network is a computer-based system that is intended to help support (usually geographical) communities by supporting, augmenting, and extending already existing social networks, by using networking technologies by, and for, a communit ...
initiative to deploy five wireless mesh based networks in rural locations across India.
In 2012, on ISOC's 20th anniversary, it established the
Internet Hall of Fame
The Internet Hall of Fame is an honorary lifetime achievement award administered by the Internet Society (ISOC) in recognition of individuals who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the Internet. , an award to "publicly recognize a distinguished and select group of visionaries, leaders, and luminaries who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the global Internet".
On June 8, 2011, ISOC mounted
World IPv6 Day
World IPv6 Day was a technical testing and publicity event in 2011 sponsored and organized by the Internet Society and several large Internet content services to test and promote public IPv6 deployment. Following the success of the 2011 test day, ...
to test
IPv6 deployment
Deployment of the Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), the latest generation of the Internet Protocol, has been in progress since the mid-2000s. IPv6 was designed as a replacement for IPv4. IPv4 has been in use since 1982, and is in the final stag ...
.
In 2012 ISOC launched Deploy360, a portal and training program to promote
IPv6
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv ...
and
DNSSEC
The Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) are a suite of extension specifications by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for securing data exchanged in the Domain Name System (DNS) in Internet Protocol (IP) networks. The protoc ...
.
On June 6, 2012, ISOC organized the
World IPv6 Launch, this time with the intention of leaving IPv6 permanently enabled on all participating sites.
In 2016 Deploy 360 extended its campaigns to include
Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS) and
DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities
DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) is an Internet security protocol to allow X.509 digital certificates, commonly used for Transport Layer Security (TLS), to be bound to domain names using Domain Name System Security Extensions (DN ...
(DANE).
In 2017 ISOC's North America Region launched an annual Indigenous Connectivity Summit with an event in
Santa Fe, New Mexico. In subsequent years the event has been held in
Inuvik, NWT, and
Hilo, Hawaii.
In December 2017 ISOC absorbed standards body Online Trust Alliance (OTA) which produces an annual Online Trust Audit, a Cyber Incident Response Guide, and an
Internet of Things (IoT) Trust Framework.
In August 2018 the Internet Society organized the IETF more formally as the IETF Administration LLC (IETF LLC) underneath ISOC. The IETF LLC continues to be closely associated with ISOC and is significantly funded by ISOC.
Support to United Nations Internet Governance Initiative
The ubiquity of the Internet in modern-day society has prompted
António Guterres, the
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...
Secretary-General
Secretary is a title often used in organizations to indicate a person having a certain amount of authority, power, or importance in the organization. Secretaries announce important events and communicate to the organization. The term is derived ...
to convene a panel of professional experts to discuss the future of the Internet and the role of the Internet in globalized digital cooperation. Three models were proposed after several rounds of discussion, i.e. a Digital Commons Architecture (DCA), a Distributed Co-Governance Architecture (CoGov), and a reformed Internet Governance Forum (IGF+). As of October 2020, the ISOC is leading and facilitating the multi-round meetings for Stakeholders’ Dialogue to collect, compile, and submit the inputs of the worldwide professionals and experts for future governance of the Internet.
Activities
In the late 1990s, the Internet Society established the
Jonathan B. Postel Service Award. It was presented every year to honor a person who has made outstanding contributions in service to the data communications community.
The Internet Society's activities included
MANRS (Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security) - which was launched in 2014 to provide crucial fixes to reduce the most common threats to the Internet's routing infrastructure.
The society organized the Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) to help grow the Internet infrastructure in Africa and hosts Internet development conferences in developing markets.
The society offered Deploy360, an information hub, portal and training program to promote
IPv6
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv ...
and
DNSSEC
The Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) are a suite of extension specifications by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for securing data exchanged in the Domain Name System (DNS) in Internet Protocol (IP) networks. The protoc ...
.
In 2017 it launched an annual Indigenous Connectivity Summit to connect tribal communities, starting with an event in
Santa Fe, New Mexico. In subsequent years the event was held in
Inuvik, NWT, and
Hilo, Hawaii.
The society also publishes reports on global Internet issues,
and created tools, surveys, codes, and policy recommendations to improve Internet use.
The society supports projects to build community networks and infrastructure, secure routing protocols, and advocate for end-to-end encryption.
Controversies
Sale of the Public Interest Registry
In 2019 the Internet Society agreed to the sale of the Public Interest Registry to
Ethos Capital
Ethos Capital is an American private equity investment firm founded in 2019 for the purpose of gaining control of the .org internet domain name and capitalizing upon it using a portfolio of data-monetization startups. Although that effort failed ...
for $1.135 billion, a transaction initially expected to be completed in early 2020. The Internet Society said it planned to use the proceeds to fund an
endowment. The Public Interest Registry is a non-profit subsidiary of the Internet Society which operates three top-level domain names (.ORG, .NGO, and .ONG), all of which have traditionally focused on serving the non-profit and non-governmental organization communities.
The sale was met with significant opposition due to involving the transfer of what is viewed as a public asset to a
private equity
In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a t ...
investment firm. In late January 2020, the
ICANN halted its final approval of the sale after the
Attorney General of California
The attorney general of California is the state attorney general of the Government of California. The officer's duty is to ensure that "the laws of the state are uniformly and adequately enforced" ( Constitution of California, Article V, Secti ...
requested detailed documentation from all parties, citing concerns that both ICANN and the Internet Society had potentially violated their public interest missions as registered charities subject to the laws of California. In February, the Internet Society's ''Chapter Advisory Council'' (which represents its membership) began the process to adopt a motion rejecting the sale if certain conditions were not complied with. On April 30, 2020, ICANN rejected the proposal to sell the PIR to Ethos Capital.
Denial of participation of Iranians in activities
In September 2016, the Internet Society indicated that it would not seek to obtain a license from the
Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of the Treasury that would allow it to fund the activities of Iranian nationals.
This caused considerable distress to ISOC members in Iran, who were thus unable to launch an Internet Society chapter in Iran, and saw a fellowship revoked that the Internet Society had awarded to fund the travel of Iranian student to visit the Internet Governance Forum in Mexico.
References
External links
*
An Oral History of the Internet Society’s Founding(2013)
{{Authority control
History of the Internet
Internet governance organizations
Internet Standards
Organizations established in 1992
1992 establishments in the United States