The paper presents an extensive survey of interstellar extinction curves derived from the near IR photometric measurements of early type stars belonging to our Galaxy. This survey is more extensive and deeper than any other one, based on spectral data. The IR magnitudes of about 500 O and B type stars with E(B-V)>=0.05 were selected from literature. The IR color excesses are determined with the aid of "artificial standards". The results indicate that the extinction law changes from place to place. The mean galactic extinction curve in the near IR is very similar in different directions and changes very little from the value R=3.10+/-0.05 obtained in this paper.