Internet Organizations and Specs

March 1996

(Please note that the links in this section point to servers that are not under Microsoft's control. Please read Microsoft's official statement regarding other servers.)

There are a number of interesting sites on the Web maintained by various Internet organizations. The major sites are:

• The World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/) The World Wide Web Consortium (more commonly known as "W3C") states that it "exists to realize the full potential of the Web. W3C works with the global community to produce specifications and reference software" for the World Wide Web. Among other things, it publishes specifications for HTML, HTTP, CGI, and other Web technologies.
• The Internet Engineering Task Force (http://www.ietf.cnri.reston.va.us/) The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is "the protocol engineering and development arm of the Internet." It publishes specifications on Internet protocols such at TCP/IP. Its many specifications and RFC (Request for Comment) documents are available via ftp at ftp://ds.internic.net/std/ and ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/. You can review the index.txt file in each of these directories to find a specific spec.
• The Internet Society (http://info.isoc.org/home.html) The Internet Society is a "non-governmental international organization for global cooperation and coordination for the Internet and its internetworking technologies and applications. Its principal purpose is to maintain and extend the development and availability of the Internet and its associated technologies and applications--both as an end in itself, and as a means of enabling organizations, professions, and individuals worldwide to more effectively collaborate, cooperate, and innovate in their respective fields and interests."

• The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) specification explains each HTML tag and attribute. Current issues in this evolving spec include style sheets. For a comprehensive list of the latest HTML tags supported by Microsoft Internet Explorer, see the updated W3C Standard HTML specification on the Internet Explorer Web site.
• The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) specification describes how Web browsers communicate with Web servers.
• The Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) specification describes a scheme for rating content on the World Wide Web that has been endorsed by Microsoft.
• W3W also provides a Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) specification that have been proposed for the Internet.
• W3C also provides a discussion of security on the Internet.
• The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) specification describes how application programs running on the server can interface with a Web server.
• The Universal Resource Locator/Identifier (URL/URI) specifications describe the syntax of URLs and URIs and talk about various other Universal Resource schemes.
• There's also a sea of information published on W3C on topics such as graphics, collaboration, mobile code (including Java), demographics of Web site visitors, and non-western character sets.

The standards and protocols on which the Internet is based are available at ftp://ds.internic.net/std/ and ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/. Each of these directories contains an *index.txt file that specifies the title of each document and its filename. For example, the TCP specification can be found at ftp://ds.internic.net/std/std7.txt. The index file has directions for how to obtain the spec if you don't have access to ftp.

Other ways of obtaining these documents are described at gopher://info.isoc.org/00/isoc/faq/where.and.how.rfcs.

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