Notes - Network Standardization

The following are notes from Computer Networks written by Tanenbaum 5th edition.

• There are many different network vendors and suppliers
• requires standardization to reduce chaos allow communication
• WiFi Alliance
• trade group to work on interoperability
• protocol standard defines protocol over the wire, but not inside the box
• de facto
• http protocol standard, part of www browsers
• bluetooth, developed by Ericsson became standard
• de jure
• standards adopted through rules by formality
• ITU
• ISO
• IETF
• IEEE
• Relationships can be complicated, 3GPP(Third Generation Partnership Project)
• collaboration between telecom associations

Who's Who in the Telecommunications World

• legal status of world's telephone companies change
• United States
• over 2000 separate telephone companies at extreme high
• few more added with AT&T breakup 1984
• 1996 Telecommunications Act
• Countries have complete monopoly on all communication, mail, telegraph, telephone, radio, tv
• PTT(Post, Telegraph and Telephone)
• European's have slowly privatized their PTTs
• ITU(International Telecommunication Union)
• standardization
• ITU-T is for telecommunications
• previously called CCITT 1993 for french name
• makes technical recommendations about telephone, telegraph, and data communications
• done by study groups
• SG 15 standardizes dsl
• H.264 MPEG-4 AVC
• X.509 public key
• ITU-R is for Radiocommunications
• ITU-D is for development sector

Who's Who in the International Standards World

• ISO (International Standards Organization)
• voluntary nontreaty org founded in 1946
• issues standards on
• nuts and blots
• telephone poles
• fishing nets
• women's underwear
• cooperates with ITU-T
• OSI standards
• Procedure in ISO
• form a working group to come up with CD(Committee draft)
• if approved revised document called DIS(Draft International Standard circulated)
• if again circulated and approved becomes IS(International Standard)
• may take several years
• NIST(National Institute of Standards and Technology)
• part of department of commerce
• IEEE(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
• largest professional org in the world
• develops standards and publishes journals

Who's Who in the Internet Standards World

• ITU-T and ISO meetings are populated by corporate officials and government workers specific to standardization
• IAB(Internet Activities Board)
• informal committee to oversee ARPANET
• headed task force, for example when a new routing algorithm needed, members would critique it and 
• technical reports called RFCs (Request for Comments)
• chronologically storred at www.ietf.org/rfc
• IRTF(Internet Research Task Force) and IETF(Internet Engineering Task Force)
• made subsidiary to IAB
• self perpetuating
• IETF dealt with short term engineering issues
• IRTF deals with long term research
• addresses new apps, user info, OSI integration, routing and addressing, security, network management, and standards
• Internet Society
• Formal standardization process formed Proposed Standard explained in an RFC
• advance Draft Standard stage, implementation rigorously test at least 2 independent sites 4 months
• then IAB convinced RFC can become Internet Standard
• W3C(World Wide Web Consortium)
• protocols and guidelines to grow web long term

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