Lynn St. Amour, who had previously served in the Internet Society’s Geneva office as global executive director and COO and as executive director for Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), succeeds Don Heath as ISOC President and CEO.  Her leadership of the organization is distinguished by tremendous growth in the breadth and reach of the Internet Society’s programs in the realms of Internet policy and governance and in global development. It is also marked by the solidification of ISOC’s relationship with and support of the IETF and its standards work.

Early in her tenure, St. Amour spearheads the Internet Society’s successful bid for the .ORG registry and establishes the Public Interest Registry (PIR) to oversee its operation. This will prove a turning point in ISOC’s fortunes, as it puts the organization on a much stronger financial footing, enabling more robust support of existing programs and partnerships and fostering the creation of new initiatives.

The St. Amour era also sees a growing emphasis on the Internet Society's status as an international organization, through the opening of Regional Bureaus throughout the world and through ISOC’s increased presence within other international organizations.

The first INET of the new millennium, INET ’01 institutes changes in the conference format, with events divided into three “Summits”—Technology, Uses of the Internet, and Governance and Regulation—meant to reflect the components and forces that shape the Internet: “[T]hose who use it, those who steer it and those who build it.” Coming after the burst of the dot-com bubble but at a time when the Internet is becoming ever more entrenched in all facets of life, the conference features plenary sessions on intellectual property on the Internet and on the lessons learned thus far in Internet self-governance. For the first time at an INET, an entire conference “thread” is devoted to the IETF.

The first INET to be held in the US capital, INET ‘02 comes at a time when, as the notes for the Welcoming Remarks have it, “[t]he Internet is at a crossroads. In the next year or two, critical choices will be made about Internet standards and Internet policy that will shape the Internet for years for come.” One feature of the conference, the IPv6 Forum's IPv6 Technology Deployment Summit, points to one of the factors that will shape the Internet’s future. Also up for debate is the future of the INETs themselves, as one of the closing sessions asks “How can we change and improve the format and focus of the conference?” Also noteworthy in this first post-9/11 INET is a panel discussion on “Security and Anti-terrorism," which seeks to address the questions “How are terrorists, national liberation movements, and computer virus writers using the Internet? What can and should law enforcement agencies do in response?”

The African Network Information Center (AFRINIC) is the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for Africa, responsible for the distribution and management of Internet number resources such as IP addresses and ASN (Autonomou System Numbers) for the African region. After gaining provisional recognition by ICANN in October of 2004, AFRINIC becomes operational on 22 February 2005, and is granted final recognition by ICANN in April of that year.

AFRINIC’s mission is to provide professional and efficient distribution of Internet number resources to the African Internet community, to support Internet technology usage and development across the continent, and to strengthen Internet self-governance in Africa by encouraging a participatory policy development. The Internet Society partners with AFRINIC in a number of endeavors, including seminars and workshops aimed at spreading awareness and implementation of IPv6.

In late 2003, the IAB set up an ad hoc advisory committee to look into and make recommendations concerning the future administrative needs of the IETF. That committee’s report was published as RFC 3716. The IETF asked the Internet Society for support in its efforts to establish an administrative restructuring process that would effect the improvements contained in that report, resulting in a commitment to establish an IASA within ISOC. RFC 4071 represents the final definition of the IASA, resulting in a streamlining of the IETF’s administrative functions, funding sources, and greater autonomy over its budget process.

This development, and the establishment by the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) and the Internet Society of a trust for the IETF, marks a turning point in the relationship between ISOC and the IETF, which formally becomes, along with the IAB and the RFC editor, and activity organized by the Internet Society.

In a departure from previous, “global” INETs, INET 2005 is a Middle East and Africa (MEA) regional conference, organized in conjunction with the Second Pan-Arab Regional Conference for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Cairo. In the session entitled 'The Internet: How it works, Why it works, Who makes it work?' representatives of the groups and organizations that enable and support the operation of the Internet infrastructure give first-hand information about just how the Internet coordination processes have evolved and how they work today. Speakers also include respected and experienced specialists from the MEA region.

The Internet Society pilots the Fellowship to the Internet Engineering Task Force programme at IETF 66 in Montreal. The success of this and a second pilot at IETF 67 lead the Internet Society to formalize the  Fellowship in 2007, as a means to identify and foster potential future leaders from emerging and developing economies and provide an opportunity for networking with individuals from around the world with similar technical interests. The program is also aimed at raising global awareness and understanding of—and participation in—the IETF and its work.

The Deploy360 Programme serves as a bridge between the IETF standards process and adoption of those standards by the global operations community for such technologies as IPv6, DNSSeC, and Routing Resiliency and Security.

IPv6 deployment efforts, in particular, confront the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses and deepen the Internet Society’s commitment to deploy IPv6 in developing countries via hands-on training workshops, facilitation of experience-sharing among operators, and increased awareness of IPv6 deployment imperatives.

To celebrate its 20^th anniversary, the Internet Society holds its first global INET conference since 2004. Global INET 2012 carries the theme “Meeting at the Crossroads: Imagining the Future Internet” and, as a prelude, features a collaborative leadership exchange centered on this same topic. The conference serves as the forum for the inaugural inductions into the newly created Internet Hall of Fame and closes with keynote remarks by IHOF inductee and founding president of ISOC Vint Cerf. 

To celebrate its 20^th anniversary, the Internet Society holds its first global INET conference since 2004. Global INET 2012 carries the theme “Meeting at the Crossroads: Imagining the Future Internet” and, as a prelude, features a collaborative leadership exchange centered on this same topic. The conference serves as the forum for the inaugural inductions into the newly created Internet Hall of Fame and closes with keynote remarks by IHOF inductee and founding president of ISOC Vint Cerf.

The Internet Society organizes World IPv6 Launch to motivate organizations across the industry—including Internet service providers (ISPs), hardware makers, and web companies—to prepare for and permanently enable Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) on their products and services as Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) address space runs out.

The largest industry commitment to and deployment of IPv6 in the history of the Internet, World IPv6 Launch acts as a focal point to bring existing deployment efforts and industry players together. By acting together on the World IPv6 Launch, ISPs, web companies, and equipment vendors are able to cooperatively address common challenges and work towards the goal of permanently deploying IPv6 on the global Internet