Background and Scope
The Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF) was not originally a standards body. It was formed in 1986 from an earlier US government funded programme (largely formed by US academic institutions) to research and build a highly resilient ‘bomb-proof’ network. In 1993, the IETF broke all ties with the US government and was reconstituted as a global not-for-profit body. As such it was founded completely independently from other telecoms standards bodies such as the ITU, and these origins still shapes the IETF today. For example, academic participation in IETF remains strong and, in principle, it tries to resist commercial influence and favour technical merit.
The scope of the IETF is the Internet and the specifications which enable it to work, but not any of the applications which use the Internet. The IETF generally does not specify details of content which run over the Internet, only the protocols which carry the content.
Organisation and Working Methods
In line with its origins, the way the IETF works is somewhat different to other standards bodies. Membership is completely open, and people participate as individual experts, not as representatives of an organisation. The IETF seeks to give oversight without setting up authority structures, and as such the emphasis is on ‘rough consensus’ rather than voting and documents are published in the names of the authors.
Work occurs in working groups (WGs) which are organised into areas. Each WG has at least one chair and each area has at least one area director. WGs are intended to have a tightly focussed scope with a clear charter.
If a new subject emerges, interested people can set up a ‘birds of a feather’ (BoF) which assesses interest in the subject, determines if it fits within the charter of an existing WG, or if a charter should be proposed for a new working group.
Individuals can submit ‘individual Internet drafts’ to a WG, where content is scoped as as ‘standards track’, ‘best current practices’ or ‘experimental’. These are normally submitted in a reasonably complete form and other members of the working group can make comments and propose changes to the authors. If the WG decides the individual Internet draft reflects a consensus of the group, it becomes a ‘working group’ draft. A WG chair can also propose a ‘work group’ draft suggesting authors and/or a ‘task force’ to create it.
There is then a reasonably extensive review process with area directors and others, and the document can then become a ‘request for comments’ (RFC) and a proposed standard. RFCs are primary documents of the IETF and are final. If updates need to be made, a new RFC is published referencing the RFC it supersedes.
Technically speaking, the IETF will only declare an RFC to be a ‘standard’ once it has been in clear use for many years. Accordingly, there are currently less than 100 true standards but 10,000 RFCs.
Documentation
In line with the origins and ethos of the IETF, all documentation is publicly available including Internet drafts (individual and working group), RFCs, work group charters and BoF requests.Even the emails of the IETF WG email lists are available to be searched.
While the IETF does technically allow documents to be in several different formats, the overwhelming number of documents are written in ASCII text with a proportionally spaced font, e.g. Courier. As a result, complex diagrams and tables are drawn in ‘ascii art’ which may seem strange to anyone not familiar with it.