Federal Networking Council

The Federal Networking Council (FNC) was chartered by the National Science and Technology Council's Committee on Computing, Information and Communications (CCIC) to act as a forum for networking collaborations among Federal agencies to meet their research, education, and operational mission goals and to bridge the gap between the advanced networking technologies being developed by research FNC agencies and the ultimate acquisition of mature version of these technologies from the commercial sector. The FNC consists of a group made up of representatives from the United States Department of Defense (DoD), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), among others.

As of October 1, 1997, FNC activities are carried out through the Large Scale Networking (LSN) group. FNC Advisory Committee was de-chartered and many of the FNC activities are or were transferred to the LSN of the Computing, Information, and Communications (CIC) R&D Subcommittee subcommittee or the Applications Council.

On October 24, 1995, the Federal Networking Council famously passed a resolution defining the term Internet:

"Resolution: The Federal Networking Council (FNC) agrees that the following language reflects our definition of the term ``Internet". ``Internet" refers to the global information system that - (i) is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons; (ii) is able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons, and/or other IP-compatible protocols; and (iii) provides, uses or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the communications and related infrastructure described herein."