Internet Engineering Task Force
Internet Engineering Task Force
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(Redirected from IETF)
Jump to: navigation, search
"IETF" redirects here. For other uses, see IETF (disambiguation).
Internet Engineering
Task Force
Abbreviation
IETF
Formation
January 16, 1986
Type
Standards Organization
Purpose/focus
Creating standards applying to the
internet to improve internet usability.
Region served
Worldwide
IETF Chair
Russ Housley
Parent organization Internet Society
Website
www.ietf.org
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) develops and promotes Internet standards,
cooperating closely with the W3C and ISO/IEC standards bodies and dealing in particular with
standards of the TCP/IP and Internet protocol suite. It is an open standards organization, with no
formal membership or membership requirements. All participants and managers are volunteers,
though their work is usually funded by their employers or sponsors; for instance, the current
chairperson is funded by VeriSign and the U.S. government's National Security Agency.[1]
Contents
[hide]
1 Organization
2 History
3 Operations
4 Chairs
5 See also
6 References
7 External links
[edit] Organization
The IETF is organized into a large number of working groups and informal discussion groups
(BoF)s, each dealing with a specific topic. Each group is intended to complete work on that topic
and then disband. Each working group has an appointed chairperson (or sometimes several cochairs), along with a charter that describes its focus, and what and when it is expected to
produce.
The working groups are organized into areas by subject matter. Current areas include:
Applications, General, Internet, Operations and Management, Real-time Applications and
Infrastructure, Routing, Security, and Transport. Each area is overseen by an area director (AD),
with most areas having two co-ADs. The ADs are responsible for appointing working group
chairs. The area directors, together with the IETF Chair, form the Internet Engineering Steering
Group (IESG), which is responsible for the overall operation of the IETF.
The IETF is formally a part of the Internet Society. The IETF is overseen by the Internet
Architecture Board (IAB), which oversees its external relationships, and relations with the RFC
Editor. The IAB is also jointly responsible for the IETF Administrative Oversight Committee
(IAOC), which oversees the IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA), which provides
logistical, etc support for the IETF. The IAB also manages the Internet Research Task Force
(IRTF), with which the IETF has a number of cross-group relations.
[edit] History
The first IETF meeting was on January 16, 1986, consisting of 21 U.S.-government-funded
researchers. It was a continuation of the work of the earlier GADS Task Force.
Initially, it met quarterly, but from 1991, it has been meeting 3 times a year. Representatives
from non-governmental entities were invited starting with the fourth IETF meeting, during
October of that year. Since that time all IETF meetings have been open to the public. The
majority of the IETF's work is done on mailing lists, and meeting attendance is not required for
contributors.
The initial meetings were very small, with fewer than 35 people in attendance at each of the first
five meetings. The maximum attendance during the first 13 meetings was only 120 attendees.
This occurred at the 12th meeting held during January 1989. These meetings have grown in both
participation and scope a great deal since the early 1990s; it had a maximum attendance of
almost 3000 at the December 2000 IETF held in San Diego, CA. Attendance declined with
industry restructuring during the early 2000s, and is currently around 1200.[2]
During the early 1990s the IETF changed institutional form from an activity of the U.S.
government to an independent, international activity associated with the Internet Society.
[edit] Operations
The details of its operations have changed considerably as it has grown, but the basic mechanism
remains publication of draft specifications, review and independent testing by participants, and
republication. Interoperability is the chief test for IETF specifications becoming standards. Most
of its specifications are focused on single protocols rather than tightly-interlocked systems. This
has allowed its protocols to be used in many different systems, and its standards are routinely reused by bodies which create full-fledged architectures (e.g. 3GPP IMS).
Because it relies on volunteers and uses "rough consensus and running code" as its touchstone,
results can be slow whenever the number of volunteers is either too small to make progress, or so
large as to make consensus difficult, or when volunteers lack the necessary expertise. For
protocols like SMTP, which is used to transport e-mail for a user community in the many
hundreds of millions, there is also considerable resistance to any change that is not fully
backwards compatible. Work within the IETF on ways to improve the speed of the standardsmaking process is ongoing but, because the number of volunteers with opinions on it is very
great, consensus mechanisms on how to improve have been slow.
Because the IETF does not have members (nor is it an organisation per se), the Internet Society
provides the financial and legal framework for the activities of the IETF and its sister bodies
(IAB, IRTF,...). Recently the IETF has set up an IETF Trust that manages the copyrighted
materials produced by the IETF. IETF activities are funded by meeting fees, meeting sponsors
and by the Internet Society via its organizational membership and the proceeds of the Public
Interest Registry.
IETF meetings vary greatly in where they are held. The list of past and future meeting locations
can be found on the IETF meetings page. The IETF has strived to hold the meetings near where
most of the IETF volunteers are located. For a long time, the goal was 3 meetings a year, with 2
in North America and 1 in either Europe or Asia (alternating between them every other year).
The goal ratio is currently, during a two year period, to have 3 in North America, 2 in Europe
and 1 in Asia. However, corporate sponsorship of the meetings is typically a more important
factor and this schedule has not been kept strictly in order to decrease operational costs.
[edit] Chairs
The IETF Chairperson is selected by the NOMCOM process specified in RFC 3777 for a 2-year
term, renewable.
Before 1993, the IETF Chair was selected by the IAB.
Mike Corrigan (1986)
Phill Gross (1986–1994)
Paul Mockapetris (1994–1996)
Fred Baker (1996–2001)
Harald Tveit Alvestrand (2001–2005)
Brian Carpenter (2005–2007)
Russ Housley (2007–)[3]
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from IETF)
Jump to: navigation, search
"IETF" redirects here. For other uses, see IETF (disambiguation).
Internet Engineering
Task Force
Abbreviation
IETF
Formation
January 16, 1986
Type
Standards Organization
Purpose/focus
Creating standards applying to the
internet to improve internet usability.
Region served
Worldwide
IETF Chair
Russ Housley
Parent organization Internet Society
Website
www.ietf.org
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) develops and promotes Internet standards,
cooperating closely with the W3C and ISO/IEC standards bodies and dealing in particular with
standards of the TCP/IP and Internet protocol suite. It is an open standards organization, with no
formal membership or membership requirements. All participants and managers are volunteers,
though their work is usually funded by their employers or sponsors; for instance, the current
chairperson is funded by VeriSign and the U.S. government's National Security Agency.[1]
Contents
[hide]
1 Organization
2 History
3 Operations
4 Chairs
5 See also
6 References
7 External links
[edit] Organization
The IETF is organized into a large number of working groups and informal discussion groups
(BoF)s, each dealing with a specific topic. Each group is intended to complete work on that topic
and then disband. Each working group has an appointed chairperson (or sometimes several cochairs), along with a charter that describes its focus, and what and when it is expected to
produce.
The working groups are organized into areas by subject matter. Current areas include:
Applications, General, Internet, Operations and Management, Real-time Applications and
Infrastructure, Routing, Security, and Transport. Each area is overseen by an area director (AD),
with most areas having two co-ADs. The ADs are responsible for appointing working group
chairs. The area directors, together with the IETF Chair, form the Internet Engineering Steering
Group (IESG), which is responsible for the overall operation of the IETF.
The IETF is formally a part of the Internet Society. The IETF is overseen by the Internet
Architecture Board (IAB), which oversees its external relationships, and relations with the RFC
Editor. The IAB is also jointly responsible for the IETF Administrative Oversight Committee
(IAOC), which oversees the IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA), which provides
logistical, etc support for the IETF. The IAB also manages the Internet Research Task Force
(IRTF), with which the IETF has a number of cross-group relations.
[edit] History
The first IETF meeting was on January 16, 1986, consisting of 21 U.S.-government-funded
researchers. It was a continuation of the work of the earlier GADS Task Force.
Initially, it met quarterly, but from 1991, it has been meeting 3 times a year. Representatives
from non-governmental entities were invited starting with the fourth IETF meeting, during
October of that year. Since that time all IETF meetings have been open to the public. The
majority of the IETF's work is done on mailing lists, and meeting attendance is not required for
contributors.
The initial meetings were very small, with fewer than 35 people in attendance at each of the first
five meetings. The maximum attendance during the first 13 meetings was only 120 attendees.
This occurred at the 12th meeting held during January 1989. These meetings have grown in both
participation and scope a great deal since the early 1990s; it had a maximum attendance of
almost 3000 at the December 2000 IETF held in San Diego, CA. Attendance declined with
industry restructuring during the early 2000s, and is currently around 1200.[2]
During the early 1990s the IETF changed institutional form from an activity of the U.S.
government to an independent, international activity associated with the Internet Society.
[edit] Operations
The details of its operations have changed considerably as it has grown, but the basic mechanism
remains publication of draft specifications, review and independent testing by participants, and
republication. Interoperability is the chief test for IETF specifications becoming standards. Most
of its specifications are focused on single protocols rather than tightly-interlocked systems. This
has allowed its protocols to be used in many different systems, and its standards are routinely reused by bodies which create full-fledged architectures (e.g. 3GPP IMS).
Because it relies on volunteers and uses "rough consensus and running code" as its touchstone,
results can be slow whenever the number of volunteers is either too small to make progress, or so
large as to make consensus difficult, or when volunteers lack the necessary expertise. For
protocols like SMTP, which is used to transport e-mail for a user community in the many
hundreds of millions, there is also considerable resistance to any change that is not fully
backwards compatible. Work within the IETF on ways to improve the speed of the standardsmaking process is ongoing but, because the number of volunteers with opinions on it is very
great, consensus mechanisms on how to improve have been slow.
Because the IETF does not have members (nor is it an organisation per se), the Internet Society
provides the financial and legal framework for the activities of the IETF and its sister bodies
(IAB, IRTF,...). Recently the IETF has set up an IETF Trust that manages the copyrighted
materials produced by the IETF. IETF activities are funded by meeting fees, meeting sponsors
and by the Internet Society via its organizational membership and the proceeds of the Public
Interest Registry.
IETF meetings vary greatly in where they are held. The list of past and future meeting locations
can be found on the IETF meetings page. The IETF has strived to hold the meetings near where
most of the IETF volunteers are located. For a long time, the goal was 3 meetings a year, with 2
in North America and 1 in either Europe or Asia (alternating between them every other year).
The goal ratio is currently, during a two year period, to have 3 in North America, 2 in Europe
and 1 in Asia. However, corporate sponsorship of the meetings is typically a more important
factor and this schedule has not been kept strictly in order to decrease operational costs.
[edit] Chairs
The IETF Chairperson is selected by the NOMCOM process specified in RFC 3777 for a 2-year
term, renewable.
Before 1993, the IETF Chair was selected by the IAB.
Mike Corrigan (1986)
Phill Gross (1986–1994)
Paul Mockapetris (1994–1996)
Fred Baker (1996–2001)
Harald Tveit Alvestrand (2001–2005)
Brian Carpenter (2005–2007)
Russ Housley (2007–)[3]