Networking Simplified - Part 07

Welcome eyes that are reading the 7th edition to my "Networking
Simplified" series that will now go further into less-involved areas of
networking. Such as requests for comments, IETF, ICANN, and various other
organizations that may be of use to you while setting up your network.
Now keep in mind that Requests for comments are not an organization, but
are:

Request For Comments
____________________

You may have heard the acronym RFC before, but never really understood
what it meant, or how you could apply this to your area of computing. RFC
stands for Request for Comment, and what it is, is a formal document that
was written by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). What they are,
are documents that go in depth or briefly of information. These can be
applied to your knowledge rack simply by going to the IETF's website and
looking them up. The IETF provides this information in numbered format,
example: RFC-35. Which is "Network Meeting." The index for these requests
for comments can be found at -> http://www.ietf.org/iesg/1rfc_index.txt
These requests for comments can be of much use to you as you need
information on a certain topic. Say you are trying to figure out how to
set up and FTP server for your network. You can get detailed information
on RFC for FTP and then move on further in your research to allow yourself
the benefit of passing files along your network. These RFC's give users a
great convienence and are a brilliant idea.





International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
________________________________________________________



Abbreviated ICANN for a very good reason, thats a mouthful of an
organization. However, they do thousands of mouthfuls of work to help
provide you the pleasure of erm... using the internet quickly and
efficiently. What they are, are a private non-profit organization that has
the responsiblity for IP space allocation (meaning they have to designate
the ips and spread them around so that there are enough for everyone),
protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management, and root
server system management. Before ICANN came along however, the Internet
Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) did this. They were not as good, and
didn't have such a cool catch phrase as ("I can at least try to manage the
internet") muahahahhahahaa.

The members of ICANN were chosen by the old head of IANA (Dr. Jonathon
Postel). ICANN has to deal with everything, whether people fighting over
certain domains, or whether alternative root server systems should be let
alone.



Internet Engineering Task Force.
_______________________________

Commonly called the IETF, and mentioned above during the RFC explanation
for good reason. Do not confuse IETF with ICANN, because they have related
but different tasks. What IETF does is the body that defines standard
internet operating protocols, for example TCP/IP (Transport Control
Protocol and Internet Protocol, gone over in previous tutorials of mine,
check the index of Networking Simplified to get the full grasp of what
these are.) IETF members are selected from the Internet Society's
individual and organization membership. There standards come from there
RFC's. See how it all ties together?



Hope you enjoyed this tutorial, it was made to make you smile as well as
teach you something about how the internet runs, and who does it. There is
no government on the internet hardly besides some of the few mentioned
above. These people work hard and normally for free to provide you all
with the best service possible. Please donate to them, and remember to
respect the internet and its many many users!