Which of these bodies is a voluntary society that individuals and organisations join, and under whose roof the IETF and the IAB sit?

Answer

ISOC

Options - A. ISOC - B. ITU-T - C. FIPS - D. ISO Why - A. Correct — the Internet Society is a voluntary membership society and the organisational home of the IETF and the IAB, whose output appears as RFCs. - B. Wrong — ITU-T is the standardisation sector of the International Telecommunication Union, which is a specialised agency of the United Nations, not a membership society. - C. Wrong, and this is the trap: FIPS is a SERIES OF DOCUMENTS published by NIST, not an organisation at all, so it can never answer a question about what kind of body something is. - D. Wrong — ISO is a nongovernmental federation of national standards bodies from more than 140 countries, not a society individuals join. Fix the four kinds and these questions answer themselves: NIST is a US federal agency, ISOC is a voluntary membership society, ITU-T is a sector of a UN specialised agency, ISO is a nongovernmental international federation. FIPS is a document series and belongs in none of those slots.

Stallings & Brown 5e ch1 §1.8