IETF working group
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| Abbreviation | IETF |
|---|---|
| Formation | January 16, 1986 |
| Type | Standards Organization |
| Purpose | Creating voluntary standards to maintain and improve the usability and interoperability of the Internet. |
| Location |
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Region served
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Worldwide |
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IETF Chair
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Alissa Cooper |
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Parent organization
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Internet Society |
| Website | ietf |
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) develops and promotes voluntary Internet standards, in particular the standards that comprise the (TCP/IP). 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.
The IETF started out as an activity supported by the U.S. federal government, but since 1993 it has operated as a standards development function under the auspices of the Internet Society, an international membership-based non-profit organization.
The IETF is organized into a large number of working groups and informal discussion groups (BoFs, or Birds of a Feather), each dealing with a specific topic and operates in a bottom-up task creation mode, largely driven by these working groups. Each working group has an appointed chairperson (or sometimes several co-chairs), along with a charter that describes its focus, and what and when it is expected to produce. It is open to all who want to participate, and holds discussions on an open mailing list or at IETF meetings, where the entry fee in July 2014 was USD $650 per person.
Rough consensus is the primary basis for decision making. There are no formal voting procedures. Because the majority of the IETF's work is done via mailing lists, meeting attendance is not required for contributors. Each working group is intended to complete work on its topic and then disband. In some cases, the WG will instead have its charter updated to take on new tasks as appropriate.
The working groups are organized into areas by subject matter. Current areas are 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.
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