If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body...

The IAB are perhaps the oldest Internet standards body, excluding the IEEE, which was founded over one hundred years ago. It’s been in existence officially since around 1983, when it was originally called the Internet Activities Board. The IAB was the result of a reorganization of the Internet Configuration Control Group, which was a committee formed at some time in the early 1970's to guide the development of the suite of protocols used with the ARPANET (The Advanced Research Projects Agency NETwork, originally used by US government agencies, which later became the Internet).

The IAB itself is made up of 13 members, including the Chair of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), and are appointed by a nomination and voting process which is initiated by the IETF nomination committee and finalized by the Internet Society (ISOC).

According to RFC 1601, the IAB's main responsibilities include:

• Selection of Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) members
  
  
• Organizing the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF)
  
  
• Oversee Internet Standards process and provide an appeal board for complaints of the process
  
  
• Manage and publish the RFC document series and select an RFC Editor
  
  
• Liaise on behalf of the Internet Society (ISOC) with other organizations concerned with global internet standards, such as the International Standardization Organization (ISO) and the International telecommunications Union (ITU).
  
  
• Provide advice to ISOC

The IAB are responsible for overseeing and guiding the IETF or IESG to address issues raised regarding the development of the Internet and associated standards, and normally publish their statements or viewpoints as RFC documents. They also guide the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in the administration of the .arpa domain.