Follow relationships
Trace how infrastructure, networks, naming and numbering, standards, institutions, and online services connect across the system.
Interactive reference
The Internet Governance Map
A visual guide to how the Internet is built, coordinated, governed, and used. Begin with any concept and follow its connections to see where technical functions and governance processes meet.
Start anywhere
Explore the Internet as a connected system
Select a node to move from a concise explanation into its relationships, institutions, evidence, and places of ongoing policymaking.
Find governance
See which institutions participate in different functions and where shared involvement connects otherwise distant parts of the map.
Go to the sources
Continue from orientation to primary technical or institutional material and to durable venues where relevant policy is developed.
Explanation and evidence
Two carefully separated source layers
The map distinguishes evidence establishing a concept from the durable processes through which related rules and practices continue to develop.
Foundational documents
Primary specifications, architectural texts, agreements, and other materials that establish a concept’s technical or institutional basis.
Policymaking fora
Standing bodies and durable participation processes where relevant rules and practices continue to be developed or reviewed. Individual policy-development proceedings, temporary reviews, reports, events, and closed consultations are not presented as fora. When no directly relevant ongoing venue can be supported, the section is omitted.
How to read the map
Understand the visual language
The methodology explains line direction; solid and dashed relationships; blue, pink, and green lines; node colors; cross-cutting overlays; and specialist satellite nodes. It also explains the map’s scope, source-selection standards, and limits as an authored model.
Read the full methodology
Choose a node and start exploring
Follow the map from a familiar concept into the technical systems, institutions, documents, and policymaking processes around it.
Open the Internet Governance Map