Standards Organizations and the ISO

Standards Organizations and the ISO

The development and implementation of de jure standards is regulated by standards organizations. For example, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), among other organizations, are responsible for several prominent network standards that support the International Standards Organization’s objective of network interoperability.

The International Standards Organization (ISO)—whose name is derived from the Greek prefix iso, meaning “same”—is located in Geneva, Switzerland. ISO develops and publishes standards and coordinates the activities of all national standardization bodies. In 1977, the ISO initiated efforts to design a communication standard based on the open systems architecture theory from which computer networks would be designed. This model came to be known as the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model.