The main reason for the Internet growing so strong and that IP and Ethernet become widely used technologies is the standardize system used for the development of those. No private organization or enterprise have has sole influence on a standard and therefore no one have the ability to adapt the technology to their business or business needs. The most skilled engineers from different business areas cooperate within working groups to solve the problems that occur with a new standard. It is often the case that inventions developed by large enterprises like Microsoft or Cisco is adapted by a standardizing committee and adjusted so it fit all needs and is scalable. Example on such development is the Ethernet protocol that was developed by Xerox cooperation.

IETF (Internet engineering task force) that is the organization that structure all standard work on the Internet is a freely composed organization with working committees in different areas. The people in those groups often is recruited from the commercial sector but also universities and federal research. The work is non-profit and hereby sponsored by the employer of the engineers. Most of the work is done electronically over the Internet in the form of discussion forums and mail groups but on occasion meeting is held to coordinate the activities within and between the groups.

A system called RFC (Request for comments) is the base for all standard work. Anyone can write a RFC and send it to the IETF, it has to be of a certain quality for it to be presented for the board and got a RFC number and be published as a proposed standard. The next step is that it has to be realized by two independent organizations, be debated and if people can agree it is elevated to a standard draft. Finally a last request for comments is published (last call) before it becomes a standard.

You can see all proposals and standards here