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I don't know the full scope of what ITU does, but I do know they are responsible for the X.509 specification[0]. It's a cornerstone upon which Public Key Infras

I don't know the full scope of what ITU does, but I do know they are responsible for the X.509 specification[0]. It's a cornerstone upon which Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is built. HTTPS, TLS, etc. would not be the same without ITU. https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-X.509 https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-X.509

woodson 2y ago
Their specifications include the technology used in telephony, such as encodings/codecs, link adaptation schemes, etc. They also publish reference implementations of many of the algorithms used.
Cyph0n 2y ago
Fun fact: it is also the oldest UN agency.
dannyobrien 2y ago
The deep lore is that most of the Internet's organizational structure was (deliberately) set up to be independent of the ITU, which was seen was captured by governments (including many authoritarian governments) and the telcos, which were at that time deeply opposed to the philosophy and practicalities of the Net. If you don't know much about the ITU it's because they lost that struggle. It's surprisingly hard to find links to this! You can get a flavor of it from this piece from 1996 https://www.wired.com/1996/10/atm-3/?gad_source=1 https://www.wired.com/1996/10/atm-3/?gad_source=1
- noobermin 2y ago
  That article itself is a piece of history referencing netscape as a contemporary company. I guess most of us only really know about orgs like the IETF or W3C instead of this ITU, but a cursory look at the wiki doesn't really show a link between the two other than that they "cooperate."
zahllos 2y ago
They had an idea that the internet would be based on a system of federated directories, which would be used to find X.400 addresses for people and send them messages on the information superhighway. This never happened, but parts of X.500 are everywhere. X.509 was one of the requirements for secure access to the directory which was recycled into certificates for the web by Netscape. LDAP is another offshoot, designed for organizations to have their own internal directory internally without needing all the other parts of X.500, and it shares some aspects of the data model with X.500 and so certificates. Active Directory builds on LDAP. Fun fact: Microsoft Exchange Server had X.400 messaging support up to I think 2016 edition and I have sent an X.400 message even. However the format is pretty cumbersome: C=CH;L=Zürich;O=Zahllos;OU=Zahllos Internet Commentary Division;G=Zahllos is not a nice way to present a contact address. If the C=CH,L=Zürich look a lot like LDAP attributes and/or fields in a certificate, they are. The ITU do many other things around telephony and communication, and the most obvious one is looking after country codes for phone numbers. If you decided to make a country tomorrow, the ITU would be where you'd go to get your country code delegation. E.164 is their standard for international numbers beginning with a +.

woodson 2y ago

Their specifications include the technology used in telephony, such as encodings/codecs, link adaptation schemes, etc. They also publish reference implementations of many of the algorithms used.

Cyph0n 2y ago

Fun fact: it is also the oldest UN agency.

dannyobrien 2y ago

The deep lore is that most of the Internet's organizational structure was (deliberately) set up to be independent of the ITU, which was seen was captured by governments (including many authoritarian governments) and the telcos, which were at that time deeply opposed to the philosophy and practicalities of the Net. If you don't know much about the ITU it's because they lost that struggle. It's surprisingly hard to find links to this! You can get a flavor of it from this piece from 1996 https://www.wired.com/1996/10/atm-3/?gad_source=1 https://www.wired.com/1996/10/atm-3/?gad_source=1

noobermin 2y ago
That article itself is a piece of history referencing netscape as a contemporary company. I guess most of us only really know about orgs like the IETF or W3C instead of this ITU, but a cursory look at the wiki doesn't really show a link between the two other than that they "cooperate."

zahllos 2y ago

They had an idea that the internet would be based on a system of federated directories, which would be used to find X.400 addresses for people and send them messages on the information superhighway. This never happened, but parts of X.500 are everywhere. X.509 was one of the requirements for secure access to the directory which was recycled into certificates for the web by Netscape. LDAP is another offshoot, designed for organizations to have their own internal directory internally without needing all the other parts of X.500, and it shares some aspects of the data model with X.500 and so certificates. Active Directory builds on LDAP. Fun fact: Microsoft Exchange Server had X.400 messaging support up to I think 2016 edition and I have sent an X.400 message even. However the format is pretty cumbersome: C=CH;L=Zürich;O=Zahllos;OU=Zahllos Internet Commentary Division;G=Zahllos is not a nice way to present a contact address. If the C=CH,L=Zürich look a lot like LDAP attributes and/or fields in a certificate, they are. The ITU do many other things around telephony and communication, and the most obvious one is looking after country codes for phone numbers. If you decided to make a country tomorrow, the ITU would be where you'd go to get your country code delegation. E.164 is their standard for international numbers beginning with a +.