[ih] What does being "in charge of the Internet" mean?

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 09-Dec-22 06:04, Vint Cerf via Internet-history wrote:
> the design intent was that each network would be operated independently

And a good thing too! Asking who's in charge of the Internet is like asking who's in charge of the roads, only more so. It all depends.

But I do remember the strange looks we used to get in places like Brussels and Geneva when telling various officials that nobody was in charge and it all worked by rough consensus and running code, and no, formal international standards were not required, thank you. I was even accused of being disingenuous at an OECD-sponsored meeting when I explained that the Internet Architecture Board wasn't in charge of the Internet's architecture.

The Internet Governance Forum is good for a laugh to this day.

    Brian

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> On Thu, Dec 8, 2022 at 10:22 AM Dave Crocker via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
>> On 12/7/2022 3:55 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>>> IIRC, one of the fundamental questions of the "Internet Experiment"
>>> was whether or not it was possible to create and operate a network for
>>> which no one person or entity was "in charge".   Prior networks, such
>>> as ARPANET, were managed and operated by a single locus of control,
>>> e.g., DARPA/DCA for setting policy, and contractor BBN to handle the
>>> technical operations of the switching fabric.
>>
>> Given that the Internet had a single backbone for a long time, I'm not
>> sure the no one in charge goal was pursued all that explicitly.
>>
>> Rather it was backed into, when additional backbones developed
>> independently, finally producing a concession to make it possible to
>> support -- route among -- them equally.  And this was NSFNet time, not
>> DARPA time.
>>
>> d/
>>
>> --
>> Dave Crocker
>> Brandenburg InternetWorking
>> bbiw.net
>> mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social
>>
>> --
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>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>
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