Lecture 3: Networking Standards

By D. Najla Al-Nabhan

Introduction to Networking Standards You can't study networking and its related

technologies without very quickly encountering a whole host of standards that are related to the subject—and organizations that create these standards.

Network standards facilitate the interoperability of network technologies and are extremely important.

Networks are literally everywhere, and every hardware device or protocol is governed by at least one standard, and usually many.

Outline of Networking Standards This lecture provides a brief examination of the

often-overlooked subject of network standards and standards organizations. A background discussion of why standards are important? Highlight the differences between proprietary, de facto and open

standards. Networking standards in general terms, Describe the most important international standards organizations

and industry groups related to networking.

Next lecture: the structure of the organizations responsible for Internet standards, including the registration authorities and registries that manage resources such as addresses, domain names and protocol values. A discussion of the Request For Comment (RFC) process used for creating Internet standards.

Why are standards important? “the beauty of standards is that there are so

many to choose from”.

standards also often differ in terms of the type of standards they are, and how they came about.

Types of standards: Proprietary Standards Open Standards De facto Standards

Proprietary Standards In the early days of computing, many people didn't

quite understand just how important universal standards were.

Most companies were run by skilled inventors, who came up with great ideas for new technologies and weren't particularly interested in sharing them.

It wasn't considered a “smart business move” to share information about new inventions with other companies—the competition!

Every company believed that standards were important, but they thought it was even more important that they be the ones to control those standards.

Open Standards Eventually, companies learned that they would be

better off to have standards that everyone agreed with, instead of constantly fighting with each other.

This is particularly true in networking, where devices need to talk to each other.

If many companies get together and agree to cooperate, they can create an open standard instead of a bunch of proprietary ones.

Open standards are available to any who are interested in using them.

Open Standards One key to the success of an open standard is a steering

organization to promote it. Usually, a neutral, non-profit trade association or working

group is established to develop and promote the standard, and the various for-profit hardware and software companies join this group and support it financially.

These groups also work with standards approval bodies like the ITU and ISO to gain acceptance for their standards.

Of course, the companies aren't doing this just to be nice to their customers. In creating open standards, they split the “market share pie” between them, but they make the pie grow much larger by attracting more customers.

De Facto Standards This brings me to the third type of standard that is often

seen in the computer world: the de facto standard. “De facto” is Latin for “in fact”, so a de facto standard is

one that is used as a universal standard just because over time it became widely used, and not because the standard was developed and approved by a standards committee.

A good example of a de facto standard is the “AT” command set used by modems; virtually all modems use it, but this resulted not from an industry group agreeing to adopt and deploy it. Rather, it was developed unilaterally by Hayes, the pioneering modem company, and then adopted by virtually every other modem maker until it became a standard.

Sometimes de facto standards succeed but often they don't, resulting a fragmented market of incompatible products.

Networking Standards All networking technologies have standards

associated with them. A networking technology may have more than one standard for any

or all of the following reasons: The original standard has been revised or updated; The technology is sufficiently complex that it needs to be described in

more than one document; The technology borrows from or builds on documents used in related

technologies; More than one organization has been involved in developing the

technology. Today, virtually all networking standards are “open”

standards, administered by a standards organization or industry group. Open standards are more popular than proprietary standards in the

computer industry

International Networking Standards Organizations

Open standards are more popular than proprietary standards in the computer industry

The rise of open standards not owned by any one company has been a great boon to customers of computer and networking products, as well as the manufacturers that sell to them.

In order to facilitate the development of open standards, however, organizations are needed that will coordinate the creation and publishing of these documents.

Generally, these are non-profit organizations that specifically take a neutral stance regarding technologies and work for the betterment of the industry as a whole.

Standards Organizations standards organizations in the area of

networking and the Internet1. International Organization for Standardization

(ISO): • Probably the biggest standards organization in the world,

the ISO is really a federation of standards organizations from dozens of nations. In the networking world, the ISO is best known for its OSI Reference Model.

Standards Organizations1. American National Standards Institute (ANSI):

ANSI is the main organization responsible for coordinating and publishing computer and information technology standards in the United States.

While they are commonly thought of as developing and maintaining standards, they do neither.

Instead, they oversee and accredit the organizations that actually create the standards, qualifying them as Standards Developing Organizations or SDOs.

ANSI also publishes the standards documents created by the SDOs, and serves as the United States' representative to the ISO.

Standards Organizations Information Technology Industry Council

(ITIC): ITIC is a group of several dozen companies in the information technology (computer) industry.

ITIC is the Standards Developing Organizations (SDO) approved by ANSI to develop and process standards related to many computer-related topics.

It was formerly known as the Computer and Business Equipment Manufacturers Association (CBEMA).

Standards Organizations National Committee for Information

Technology (NCITS): A committee established by the ITIC to develop and maintain standards related to the information technology world.

NCITS was formerly known by the name Accredited Standards Committee X3, Information Technology, or more commonly, just X3.

It maintains several sub-committees that develop and maintain standards for various technical subjects.

Standards Organizations Institute of Electrical and Electronics

Engineers (IEEE): The IEEE (pronounced “eye-triple-ee”) is a well-known professional organization for those in the electrical or electronics fields, including computers and networking.

IEEE's main claim to fame in the networking industry is the IEEE 802 Project, which encompasses many popular networking technologies including Ethernet.

Standards Organizations Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA): The EIA is an

international industry association that is best known for publishing electrical wiring and transmission standards.

Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA): The TIA is the communications sector of the EIA, and is responsible for developing communications standards. Since communications, wiring and transmission are all related, and since the TIA and EIA organizations are also related, standards produced by the EIA or TIA are often labeled with the combined prefixes “EIA/TIA” or “TIA/EIA”.

Standards Organizations International Telecommunication Union -

Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T): ITU-T is another large international body that develops standards for the telecommunications industry.

The ITU-T was formerly named the International Telephone and Telegraph Consultative Committee or CCITT (the abbreviation was of the French version of the organization's name, Comité consultatif international téléphonique et télégraphique.)

Standards Organizations European Telecommunications

Standards Institute (ETSI): An organization with members from dozens of countries both within and outside Europe that is dedicated to developing telecommunications standards for the European market (and elsewhere).

ETSI is known for, among other things, regulating the use of radio bandwidth in Europe and developing standards such as HiperLAN.

Conclusion This list represents some of the more important

organizations that are responsible for establishing and publishing standards in the networking world.

We should also point out that the set of related organizations responsible for creating Internet standards is not shown in this list.

I want to emphasize that many of the organizations above do not actually develop the various standards. Generally, these are oversight organizations—“high level management” if you will—that work with many other smaller groups who actually develop the standards. Also, in many cases a particular standard may be published by more than one standards organization, so it may be labeled with more than one name.

Key Concept There are a number of well-known international

organizations that play an important role in the development of open networking standards.

Some of the most important of these are ISO, ANSI, ITIC, IEEE, EIA/TIA, ITU-T and ETSI.

These are oversight organizations, responsible for overall management of the standards development process, rather than for the particulars of creating individual standards.

Next Lecture! Quiz: Lectures 3