y pioneers as Vinton Cerf and the late John Pos- tel (I want to say, "back in the last century," to make them seem like real pioneers!). Standards, on the other hand, are created as the result of a consensus-building process that can take years to complete. By design, standards must meet the requirements of the entire data and telecom- munications industry, which is of course global. It makes sense, there- fore, that some international body be responsible for overseeing the creation of international standards. One such body is the United Nations (UN). Its 150 + member nations work together in an attempt to harmo- nize whatever differences they have at various levels of interaction, one of which is international telecommunications. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a suborganization of the UN, is responsible for not only coordinating the creation of worldwide standards but also publishing them under the auspices of its own suborganizations. These include the Telecommunications Standardization Sector (TSS, sometimes called the ITU-T, and formerly called the Consultative Com- mittee on International Telegraphy and Telephony, or the CCITT), the Telecommunications Development Sector (TDS), and the Radio Commu- nication Sector (RCS, formerly the Consultative Committee on Interna- tional Radio, or the CCIR). The organizational structure is shown in Figure 1-4. Of course, the UN and its suborganizations cannot perform this task alone, nor should they. Instead, they rely upon the input of hundreds of industry-specific organizations as well as local, regional, national, and Figure 1-4 The ITU organizational structure Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. First Things First First Things First international standards bodies that feed information, perspectives, observations, and technical direction to the ITU, which serves as th