Internet Governance and Standards

This group gathers pioneers of computer networking whose primary contribution was building the standards bodies, registries and institutions that coordinate the Internet rather than its wires or code, including the Internet Engineering Task Force and its Request for Comments process, the World Wide Web Consortium, the regional Internet registries such as APNIC and RIPE NCC that allocate addresses, the domain name system and its registries, the Internet Society, the Internet Hall of Fame honorees who connected their own countries and regions to the global network, and early public documentation and advocacy for an open Internet. Their shared work is the governance, standardization and institution-building that let separately built networks interoperate as one Internet, as distinct from designing the protocols themselves, which belongs to Internet Protocols and Routing.