The Boss
And Who's Really In charge of the Internet?
Nobody, really. It's such a huge and diverse creature, everybody just 'borrows' pieces of it rather than kowtows to one individual owner. The Internet is very much a global resource, which grows and develops almost organically. That said, however, it's not completely unregulated.

If you had to pinpoint one organisation that has more clout than any other it would have to be the National Science Foundation, or NSF. If you remember, it was one of the groups which was instrumental in the creation of the Internet in the first place, and has continued to exert a great deal of influence in the network's development. Also important is an American organisation called Advanced Network and Services, which has provided much of the Net's infrastructure and The NSF suggests an 'acceptable use policy' -it's one of the few sets of rules on the network.

It is backed by three major US corporations - Merit (the Michigan Education and Research Infrastructure Triad), IBM and the telecommunications giant MCI. The ANS corporation was created by the NSF, and operates the NSFnet backbone, one of the major Net networks. The NSF also suggests an `acceptable use policy' - one of the few sets of rules on the Internet (and then only for use of the NSFnet backbone).

Perhaps a more direct form of control comes from such groups as the Internet Society in the USA and the Resaux Associes pour la Recherche Europeene (RARE) in Europe. These two bodies rely on voluntary co-operation, rather than commercial sponsorship, and are set-ups that seem to work well with the Net.

      

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