IETF | Introduction

The IETF works on a broad range of networking technologies that provide the foundation for the Internet's growth and evolution.
While most IETF work takes place online, meetings and other events such as Hackathons provide in-person opportunities to advance work within the IETF.
The IETF is the premier Internet standards organization. It follows open and well-documented processes for setting these standards. Once published, those standards are made freely available.
The global IETF community works together in many different ways to produce high quality, relevant technical documents that influence the way people design, use, and manage the Internet.
By supporting the IETF today, you are ensuring a free and open Internet exists tomorrow.
A brief introduction to the Mission, Participants, Principles, Work and Meetings of the IETF
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), founded in 1986, is the premier standards development organization (SDO) for the Internet. The IETF makes voluntary standards that are often adopted by Internet users, network operators, and equipment vendors, and it thus helps shape the trajectory of the development of the Internet. But in no way does the IETF control, or even patrol, the Internet.
Quoting from RFC 3935: A Mission Statement for the IETF:
"the overall goal of the IETF is to make the Internet work better." "Its mission is to produce high quality, relevant technical and engineering documents that influence the way people design, use, and manage the Internet in such a way as to make the Internet work better. These documents include protocol standards, best current practices, and informational documents of various kinds."
The Mission Statement further states that the Internet isn't value-neutral, and neither is the IETF. The IETF wants the Internet to be useful for communities that share our commitment to openness and fairness. The IETF embraces technical concepts such as decentralized control, edge-user empowerment and sharing of resources, because those concepts resonate with the core values of the IETF community. These concepts have little to do with the technology that's possible, and much to do with the technology that the IETF chooses to create.
There is no membership in the IETF. Anyone can participate by signing up to a working group mailing list (more on that below), or registering for an IETF meeting. All IETF participants are considered volunteers and expected to participate as individuals, including those paid to participate.
The IETF welcomes all interested individuals and participants come from all over the world and from many different parts of the Internet industry. In any one year, over 7000 people actively participate in the IETF either by authoring a document, engaging in a mailing list discussion, or attending a meeting.
The only fee the IETF charges is for registering for an IETF meeting, with options in place to prevent that fee from becoming a barrier to participation.
IETF participants are regularly shown the Note Well, a reminder of the policies and processes they are expected to comply with. To ensure an environment in which people of many different backgrounds are treated with dignity, decency, and respect, these policies include a code of conduct, an anti-harassment policy, and the IETF has an Ombudsteam who are the point of escalation for any problems with conduct.
The IETF conducts its work solely in English.
The IETF pursues its mission in adherence to the following cardinal principles:
Open process Any interested person can participate in the work, know what is being decided, and make his or her voice heard on the issue. Part of this principle is our commitment to making our documents, our Working Group mailing lists, our attendance lists, and our meeting minutes publicly available on the Internet.
Technical competence The issues on which the IETF produces its documents are issues where the IETF has the competence needed to speak to them, and that the IETF is willing to listen to technically competent input from any source. Technical competence also means that we expect IETF output to be designed to sound network engineering principles - this is also often referred to as "engineering quality".
Volunteer Core Our participants and our leadership are people who come to the IETF because they want to do work that furthers the IETF's mission of "making the Internet work better."
Rough consensus and running code We make standards based on the combined engineering judgement of our participants and our real-world experience in implementing and deploying our specifications.
Protocol ownership When the IETF takes ownership of a protocol or function, it accepts the responsibility for all aspects of the protocol, even though some aspects may rarely or never be seen on the Internet. Conversely, when the IETF is not responsible for a protocol or function, it does not attempt to exert control over it, even though it may at times touch or affect the Internet.
The IETF publishes its technical documentation as RFCs, an acronym for their historical title Requests for Comments. They describe the Internet's technical foundations, such as addressing, routing, and transport technologies. RFCs also specify protocols like TLS 1.3, QUIC, and WebRTC that are used to deliver services used by billions of people every day, such as real-time collaboration, email, and the domain name system.
Software developers, hardware manufacturers, and network operators around the world voluntarily implement and adopt the technical specifications and best practices described by RFCs.
The RFC Editor website is the authoritative site for RFCs. The IETF Datatracker provides transparency on the process that resulted in the publication of each RFC.
For more information see About RFCs.
The work of the IETF is to produce technical documents (RFCs) that define how Internet technology works in detail, and can be operated and managed at scale.
New work in the IETF begins with one or