The ultimate authority for where the Internet is going rests with the Internet Society, or ISOC (URL: http://www.isoc.org). ISOC is a voluntary membership organization whose purpose is to promote global information exchange through Internet technology. It appoints a council o elders, which has responsibility for the technical management and direction of the Internet.

This council of elders is a group of invited volunteers called the Internet architecture board, or IAB (URL: http://www.iab.org/iab). The IAB meets regularly to "bless" standards and allocate resources, such as addresses. The IAB is responsible for Internet standards; it decides when a standard is necessary, it considers the problem, adopts a standard, and appropriately enough, announces it via the network. The IAB also keeps track of various numbers (and other things) that must remain unique. For example, each computer on the Internet has a unique 32-bit address; no other computer has the same address. . . .The IAB worries about this kind of problems. It does not actually assign the addresses, but it makes the rules about how to assign addresses.