tiple disparate networks via gateways-what we today refer to as routers. Jonathan Postel and the Internet Jonathan Postel played a pivotal role in creating and administering the Internet. He was one of a small group of computer scientists who created the ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. For more than 30 years he served as editor of the Request for Comments (RFC) series of technical notes that began with the earliest days of the ARPANET and con- tinued into the Internet. Although intended to be informal, RFCs have often laid the foundation for technical standards governing the Internet's operation. Also for 30 years, Postel handled the administrative end of Internet addresses, under the auspices of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), a U.S. government- financed entity. As part of the effort to hand over administration of the Internet to an Internet Basics international private corporation, Postel delivered a proposal to the U.S. government for transforming IANA into a nonprofit corporation with broad representation from the com- mercial and academic sectors. That organization is today known as the Internet Corpora- tion for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which still manages IANA. In 1980, Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) began to be implemented on an experimental basis, and by 1983, it was required in order for a subnetwork to participate in the larger virtual Internet. The original Internet model was not based on the telephone network model. It involved distributed control rather than centralized control, and it relied on co- operation among its users, which initially were largely academicians and research- ers. The original Internet had no regulation, no monopoly, and no universal-service mandate, although these issues are being considered seriously now. Regulation of the Internet The lack of regulation and mandates in the original Internet brings up myriad interesting questions: Did that lack actually accelerate the growth of the Internet? Did it also mean that In