The most significant example of interoperability is the internet, which enables countless independent, heterogeneous, and autonomous networks can safely, reliably, and comprehensibly exchange information globally. All of this is made possible by the adoption of the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP), a set of communications protocols that tell disparate networks how data should be packetized, addressed, transmitted, routed, and received. This suite is managed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a nonprofit open standards group established in 1986 under the US federal government (it
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