Protocol Architects Are Not the Creators of the Internet

TCP/IP standardized interoperability and end to end transport semantics. The World Wide Web standardized publishing and retrieval. Neither TCP/IP nor the Web specifies, provisions, or enforces the path properties required for utility grade Internet operation at scale. This memo defines terminology to distinguish interoperability standards from utility grade operation and specifies operational requirements for “infrastructure activation”: provisioned transport, interconnection strategy, routing policy control, redundancy, locality, continuous monitoring, incident response, and enforceable service accountability. This memo proposes no protocol changes. Figure 1. Three layer model. Protocols enable interoperability. The Web enables publishing. Utility grade Internet behavior requires infrastructure activation.