“We Reject: Kings, Presidents, and Voting”: Internet Community Autonomy in Managing the Growth of the Internet

ABSTRACT

The Internet is currently facing the gravest challenge in its 30-year history as IPv4 addresses, the fundamental numbers required for a machine to connect to the Internet, run out. Despite the economic importance of the issue, states have played little role in its governance. This article uses organization theory to examine how the Internet community of technical experts in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) has been protective of their expert authority and maintained autonomy to manage the address exhaustion problem on their own, guarding against “political” interventions in Internet governance by states.

Keywords:

• Internet governance
• Internet protocol version 6
• IP addresses
• IPv6
• organization theory
• transnationalism

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Pamela Zeiser, Matt Lepinski of BBN Technologies, and the journal's anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.