Network Working Group P. Hoffman
Request for Comments: 4677 VPN Consortium
FYI: 17 S. Harris
Obsoletes: 3160 University of Michigan
Category: Informational September 2006
The Tao of IETF: A Novice's Guide to
the Internet Engineering Task Force
Status of This Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).
Abstract
This document describes the inner workings of IETF meetings and
Working Groups, discusses organizations related to the IETF, and
introduces the standards process. It is not a formal IETF process
document but instead an informational overview.
Hoffman & Harris Informational [Page 1]RFC 4677 The Tao of IETF September 2006
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................4
2. Acknowledgements ................................................5
3. What Is the IETF? ...............................................5
3.1. Humble Beginnings ..........................................6
3.2. The Hierarchy ..............................................7
3.2.1. ISOC (Internet Society) .............................7
3.2.2. IESG (Internet Engineering Steering Group) ..........8
3.2.3. IAB (Internet Architecture Board) ..................10
3.2.4. IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) .........11
3.2.5. RFC Editor .........................................11
3.2.6. IETF Secretariat ...................................12
3.3. IETF Mailing Lists ........................................12
4. IETF Meetings ..................................................13
4.1. Registration ..............................................14
4.2. Take the Plunge and Stay All Week! ........................15
4.3. Newcomer Training .........................................16
4.4. Dress Code ................................................16
4.5. Seeing Spots Before Your Eyes .............................16
4.6. Terminal Room .............................................17
4.7. Meals and Other Delights ..................................17
4.8. Social Event ..............................................18
4.9. Agenda ....................................................18
4.10. EDU to the Rescue ........................................19
4.11. Where Do I Fit In? .......................................19
4.11.1. IS Managers .......................................19
4.11.2. Network Operators and ISPs ........................19
4.11.3. Networking Hardware and Software Vendors ..........20
4.11.4. Academics .........................................20
4.11.5. Computer Trade Press ..............................20
4.12. Proceedings ..............................................21
4.13. Other General Things .....................................21
5. Working Groups .................................................22
5.1. Working Group Chairs ......................................23
5.2. Getting Things Done in a Working Group ....................24
5.3. Preparing for Working Group Meetings ......................25
5.4. Working Group Mailing Lists ...............................26
5.5. Interim Working Group Meetings ............................27
6. BOFs ...........................................................27
7. New to the IETF and Coming to a Meeting? STOP HERE!
(Temporarily) ..................................................28
8. RFCs and Internet Drafts .......................................29
8.1. Getting an RFC Published ..................................29
8.2. Letting Go Gracefully .....................................30
8.3. Internet Drafts ...........................................31
8.3.1. Recommended Reading for Writers ....................32
8.3.2. Filenames and Other Matters ........................33
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8.4. Standards-Track RFCs ......................................34
8.4.1. Telling It Like It Is -- Using MUST and SHOULD
and MAY ............................................35
8.4.2. Normative References in Standards ..................36
8.4.3. IANA Considerations ................................37
8.4.4. Security Considerations ............................37
8.4.5. Patents in IETF Standards ..........................37
8.5. Informational and Experimental RFCs .......................38
9. How to Contribute to the IETF ..................................39
9.1. What You Can Do ...........................................39
9.2. What Your Company Can Do ..................................40
10. IETF and the Outside World ....................................40
10.1. IETF and Other Standards Groups ..........................40
10.2. Press Coverage of the IETF ...............................41
11. Security Considerations .......................................42
Appendix A. Related Information ...................................43
A.1. Why "the Tao"? ............................................43
A.2. Useful Email Addresses ....................................43
A.3. Useful Documents and Files ................................44
A.4. Acronyms and Abbreviations Used in the Tao ................44
Appendix B. IETF Guiding Principles ...............................45
B.1. General ...................................................45
B.2. Management and Leadership .................................45
B.3. Process ...................................................46
B.4. Working Groups ............................................46
B.5. Documents .................................................47
Informative References ............................................48
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1. Introduction
Since its early years, attendance at Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF) face-to-face meetings has grown phenomenally. Many of the
attendees are new to the IETF at each meeting, and many of those go
on to become regular attendees. When the meetings were smaller, it
was relatively easy for a newcomer to get into the swing of things.
Today, however, a newcomer meets many more new people, some
previously known only as the authors of documents or thought-
provoking email messages.
This document describes many aspects of the IETF, with the goal of
explaining to newcomers how the IETF works. This will give them a
warm, fuzzy feeling and enable them to make the meeting and the
Working Group discussions more productive for everyone.
Of course, it's true that many IETF participants don't go to the
face-to-face meetings at all. Instead, they're active on the mailing
list of various IETF Working Groups. Since the inner workings of
Working Groups can be hard for newcomers to understand, this document
provides the mundane bits of information that newcomers will need in
order to become active participants.
The IETF is always in a state of change. Although the principles in
this document are expected to remain largely the same over time,
practical details may well have changed by the time you read it; for
example, a web-based tool may have replaced an email address for
requesting some sort of action.
Many types of IETF documentation are mentioned in the Tao, from BCPs
to RFCs and FYIs and STDs. BCPs make recommendations for Best
Current Practices in the Internet; RFCs are the IETF's main technical
documentation series, politely known as "Requests for Comments"; FYIs
provide topical and technical overviews that are introductory or
appeal to a broad audience; and STDs are RFCs identified as
"standards". See Section 8 for more information.
The acronyms and abbreviations used in this document are usually
expanded in place and are explained fully in Appendix A.
This document is intended to obsolete FYI 17, RFC 3160. See Section
3.2.5 for information on what it means for one RFC to obsolete
another.
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2. Acknowledgements
The original version of this document, published in 1994, was written
by Gary Malkin. His knowledge of the IETF, insights, and unmatched
writing style set the standard for this later revision, and his
contributions to the current document are also much appreciated.
Paul Hoffman wrote significant portions of this revision and provided
encouragement, expertise, and much-needed guidance. Other
contributors include Brian Carpenter, Scott Bradner, Michael Patton,
Donald E. Eastlake III, Tony Hansen, Pekka Savola, Lisa Dusseault,
the IETF Secretariat, members of the User Services Working Group, and
members of the PESCI design team.
3. What Is the IETF?
The Internet Engineering Task Force is a loosely self-organized group
of people who contribute to the engineering and evolution of Internet
technologies. It is the principal body engaged in the development of
new Internet standard specifications. The IETF is unusual in that it
exists as a collection of happenings, but is not a corporation and
has no board of directors, no members, and no dues; see [BCP95], "A
Mission Statement for the IETF", for more detail.
Its mission includes the following:
o Identifying, and proposing solutions to, pressing operational and
technical problems in the Internet
o Specifying the development or usage of protocols and the near-term
architecture to solve such technical problems for the Internet
o Making recommendations to the Internet Engineering Steering Group
(IESG) regarding the standardization of protocols and protocol
usage in the Internet
o Facilitating technology transfer from the Internet Research Task
Force (IRTF) to the wider Internet community
o Providing a forum for the exchange of information within the
Internet community between vendors, users, researchers, agency
contractors, and network managers
The IETF meeting is not a conference, although there are technical
presentations. The IETF is not a traditional standards organization,
although many specifications are produced that become standards. The
IETF is made up of volunteers, many of whom meet three times a year
to fulfill the IETF mission.
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There is no membership in the IETF. Anyone may register for and
attend any meeting. The closest thing there is to being an IETF
member is being on the IETF or Working Group mailing lists (see
Section 3.3). This is where the best information about current IETF
activities and focus can be found.
Of course, no organization can be as successful as the IETF is
without having some sort of structure. In the IETF's case, that
structure is provided by other organizations, as described in
[BCP11], "The Organizations Involved in the IETF Standards Process".
If you participate in the IETF and read only one BCP, this is the one
you should read.
In many ways, the IETF runs on the beliefs of its members. One of
the "founding beliefs" is embodied in an early quote about the IETF
from David Clark: "We reject kings, presidents and voting. We
believe in rough consensus and running code". Another early quote
that has become a commonly-held belief in the IETF comes from Jon
Postel: "Be conservative in what you send and liberal in what you
accept".
The IETF is really about its members. Because of the unrestrictive
membership policies, IETF members come from all over the world and
from many different parts of the Internet industry. See Section 4.11
for information about the ways that many people fit into the IETF.
One more thing that is important for newcomers: the IETF in no way
"runs the Internet", despite what some people mistakenly might say.
The IETF makes standards that are often adopted by Internet users,
but it does not control, or even patrol, the Internet. If your
interest in the IETF is because you want to be part of the overseers,
you may be badly disappointed by the IETF.
3.1. Humble Beginnings
The first IETF meeting was held in January 1986 at Linkabit in San
Diego, with 21 attendees. The 4th IETF, held at SRI in Menlo Park in
October 1986, was the first that non-government vendors attended.
The concept of Working Groups was introduced at the 5th IETF meeting
at the NASA Ames Research Center in California in February 1987. The
7th IETF, held at MITRE in McLean, Virginia, in July 1987, was the
first meeting with more than 100 attendees.
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The 14th IETF meeting was held at Stanford University in July 1989.
It marked a major change in the structure of the IETF universe. The
IAB (then Internet Activities Board, now Internet Architecture
Board), which until that time oversaw many "task forces", changed its
structure to leave only two: the IETF and the IRTF. The IRTF is
tasked to consider long-term research problems in the Internet. The
IETF also changed at that time.
After the Internet Society (ISOC) was formed in January 1992, the IAB
proposed to ISOC that the IAB's activities should take place under
the auspices of the Internet Society. During INET92 in Kobe, Japan,
the ISOC Trustees approved a new charter for the IAB to reflect the
proposed relationship.
The IETF met in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in July 1993. This was
the first IETF meeting held in Europe, and the US/non-US attendee
split was nearly 50/50. About one in three IETF meetings are now
held in Europe or Asia, and the number of non-US attendees continues
to be high -- about 50%, even at meetings held in the United States.
3.2. The Hierarchy
3.2.1. ISOC (Internet Society)
The Internet Society is an international, non-profit, membership
organization that fosters the expansion of the Internet. One of the
ways that ISOC does this is through financial and legal support of
the other "I" groups described here, particularly the IETF. ISOC
provides insurance coverage for many of the people in the IETF
process and acts as a public relations channel for the times that one
of the "I" groups wants to say something to the press. The ISOC is
one of the major unsung (and under-supported) heroes of the Internet.
Starting in spring 2005, the ISOC also became home base for the
IETF's directly employed administrative staff. This is described in
more detail in [BCP101], "Structure of the IETF Administrative
Support Activity (IASA)". The staff initially includes only an
Administrative Director (IAD) who works full-time overseeing IETF
meeting planning, operational aspects of support services (the
secretariat, IANA (the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), and the
RFC Editor, which are described later in this section), and the
budget. He or she (currently it's a he) leads the IETF
Administrative Support Activity (IASA), which takes care of tasks
such as collecting meeting fees and paying invoices, and also
supports the tools for the work of IETF working groups, the IESG, the
IAB, and the IRTF (more about these later in this section).
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As well as staff, the IASA comprises volunteers and ex officio
members from the ISOC and IETF leadership. The IASA and the IAD are
directed by the IETF Administrative Oversight Committee (IAOC), which
is selected by the IETF community. Here's how all this looks:
Internet Society
|
IAOC
|
IASA
|
IAD
Neither the IAD nor the IAOC have any influence over IETF standards
development, which we turn to now.
3.2.2. IESG (Internet Engineering Steering Group)
The IESG is responsible for technical management of IETF activities
and the Internet standards process. It administers the process
according to the rules and procedures that have been ratified by the
ISOC Trustees. However, the IESG doesn't do much direct leadership,
such as the kind you will find in many other standards organizations.
As its name suggests, its role is to set directions rather than to
give orders. The IESG ratifies or corrects the output from the
IETF's Working Groups (WGs), gets WGs started and finished, and makes
sure that non-WG drafts that are about to become RFCs are correct.
The IESG consists of the Area Directors (ADs), who are selected by
the Nominations Committee (which is usually called "the NomCom") and
are appointed for two years. The process for choosing the members of
the IESG is detailed in [BCP10], "IAB and IESG Selection,
Confirmation, and Recall Process: Operation of the Nominating and
Recall Committees".
The current areas and abbreviations are shown below.
Area Description
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Applications (APP) Protocols seen by user programs, such as
email and the web
General (GEN) Catch-all for WGs that don't fit in other
areas (which is very few)
Internet (INT) Different ways of moving IP packets and
DNS information
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Operations and Operational aspects, network monitoring,
Management (OPS) and configuration
Real-time Delay-sensitive interpersonal
Applications and communications
Infrastructure (RAI)
Routing (RTG) Getting packets to their destinations
Security (SEC) Authentication and privacy
Transport (TSV) Special services for special packets
Because the IESG has a great deal of influence on whether Internet
Drafts become RFCs, many people look at the ADs as somewhat godlike
creatures. IETF participants sometimes reverently ask Area Directors
for their opinion on a particular subject. However, most ADs are
nearly indistinguishable from mere mortals and rarely speak from
mountaintops. In fact, when asked for specific technical comments,
the ADs may often defer to members at large whom they feel have more
knowledge than they do in that area.
The ADs for a particular area are expected to know more about the
combined work of the WGs in that area than anyone else. On the other
hand, the entire IESG reviews each Internet Draft that is proposed to
become an RFC. Any AD may record a "DISCUSS" ballot position against
a draft if he or she has serious concerns. If these concerns cannot
be resolved by discussion, an override procedure is defined such that
at least two IESG members must express concerns before a draft can be
blocked from moving forward. These procedures help ensure that an
AD's "pet project" doesn't make it onto the standards track if it
will have a negative effect on the rest of the IETF protocols and
that an AD's "pet peeve" cannot indefinitely block something.
This is not to say that the IESG never wields power. When the IESG
sees a Working Group veering from its charter, or when a WG asks the
IESG to make the WG's badly designed protocol a standard, the IESG
will act. In fact, because of its high workload, the IESG usually
moves in a reactive fashion. It eventually approves most WG requests
for Internet Drafts to become RFCs, and usually only steps in when
something has gone very wrong. Another way to think about this is
that the ADs are selected to think, not to just run the process. The
quality of the IETF standards comes both from the review they get in
the Working Groups and the scrutiny that the WG review gets from the
ADs.
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The IETF is run by rough consensus, and it is the IESG that judges
whether a WG has come up with a result that has community consensus.
(See Section 5.2 for more information on WG consensus.) Because of
this, one of the main reasons that the IESG might block something
that was produced in a WG is that the result did not really gain
consensus in the IETF as a whole, that is, among all of the Working
Groups in all areas. For instance, the result of one WG might clash
with a technology developed in a different Working Group. An
important job of the IESG is to watch over the output of all the WGs
to help prevent IETF protocols that are at odds with each other.
This is why ADs are supposed to review the drafts coming out of areas
other than their own.
3.2.3. IAB (Internet Architecture Board)
The IAB is responsible for keeping an eye on the "big picture" of the
Internet, and it focuses on long-range planning and coordination
among the various areas of IETF activity. The IAB stays informed
about important long-term issues in the Internet, and it brings these
topics to the attention of people it thinks should know about them.
The IAB web site is at http://www.iab.org/.
IAB members pay special attention to emerging activities in the IETF.
When a new IETF Working Group is proposed, the IAB reviews its
charter for architectural consistency and integrity. Even before the
group is chartered, the IAB members are more than willing to discuss
new ideas with the people proposing them.
The IAB also sponsors and organizes the Internet Research Task Force
and convenes invitational workshops that provide in-depth reviews of
specific Internet architectural issues. Typically, the workshop
reports make recommendations to the IETF community and to the IESG.
The IAB also:
o Approves NomCom's IESG nominations
o Acts as the appeals board for appeals against IESG actions
o Appoints and oversees the RFC Editor
o Approves the appointment of the IANA
o Acts as an advisory body to ISOC
o Oversees IETF liaisons with other standards bodies
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Like the IESG, the IAB members are selected for multi-year positions
by the NomCom and are approved by the ISOC Board of Trustees.
3.2.4. IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority)
The core registrar for the IETF's activities is the IANA. Many
Internet protocols require that someone keep track of protocol items
that were added after the protocol came out. Typical examples of the
kinds of registries needed are for TCP port numbers and MIME types.
The IAB has designated the IANA organization to perform these tasks,
and the IANA's activities are financially supported by ICANN, the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
Ten years ago, no one would have expected to see the IANA mentioned
on the front page of a newspaper. IANA's role had always been very
low key. The fact that IANA was also the keeper of the root of the
domain name system forced it to become a much more public entity, one
that was badly maligned by a variety of people who never looked at
what its role was. Nowadays, the IETF is generally no longer
involved in the IANA's domain name and IP address assignment
functions, which are overseen by ICANN.
Even though being a registrar may not sound interesting, many IETF
participants will testify to how important IANA has been for the
Internet. Having a stable, long-term repository run by careful and
conservative operators makes it much easier for people to experiment
without worrying about messing things up. IANA's founder, Jon
Postel, was heavily relied upon to keep things in order while the
Internet kept growing by leaps and bounds, and he did a fine job of
it until his untimely death in 1998.
3.2.5. RFC Editor
The RFC Editor edits, formats, and publishes Internet Drafts as RFCs,
working in conjunction with the IESG. An important secondary role is
to provide one definitive repository for all RFCs (see
http://www.rfc-editor.org). Once an RFC is published, it is never
revised. If the standard it describes changes, the standard will be
re-published in another RFC that "obsoletes" the first.
One of the most popular misconceptions in the IETF community is that
the role of the RFC Editor is performed by IANA. In fact, the RFC
Editor is a separate job, although both the RFC Editor and IANA
involved the same people for many years. The IAB approves the
organization that will act as RFC Editor and the RFC Editor's general
policy. The RFC Editor is funded by IASA and can be contacted by
email at mailto:rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org.
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3.2.6. IETF Secretariat
There are, in fact, a few people who are paid to maintain the IETF.
The IETF Secretariat provides day-to-day logistical support, which
mainly means coordinating face-to-face meetings and running the
IETF-specific mailing lists (not the WG mailing lists). The
Secretariat is also responsible for keeping the official Internet
Drafts directory up to date and orderly, maintaining the IETF web
site, and helping the IESG do its work. It provides various tools
for use by the community and the IESG. The IETF Secretariat is under
contract to IASA, which in turn is financially supported by the fees
of the face-to-face meetings.
3.3. IETF Mailing Lists
Anyone who plans to attend an IETF meeting should join the IETF
announcement mailing list, mailto:ietf-announce@ietf.org. This is
where all of the meeting information, RFC announcements, and IESG
Protocol Actions and Last Calls are posted. People who would like to
"get technical" may also join the IETF general discussion list,
ietf@ietf.org. This is where discussions of cosmic significance are
held (Working Groups have their own mailing lists for discussions
related to their work). Another mailing list, mailto:i-d-
announce@ietf.org, announces each new version of every Internet Draft
as it is published.
Subscriptions to these and other IETF-run mailing lists are handled
by a program called "mailman". Mailman can be somewhat finicky about
the format of subscription messages, and sometimes interacts poorly
with email programs that make all email messages into HTML files.
Mailman will treat you well, however, if you format your messages
just the way it likes.
To join the IETF announcement list, for example, send email to
mailto:ietf-announce-request@ietf.org. Enter the word 'subscribe'
(without the quotes) in the Subject line of the message and in the
message body. To join the IETF discussion list, send email to
<mailto:ietf-request@ietf.org> and enter the word 'subscribe' as
explained above. If you decide to withdraw from either list, use the
word 'unsubscribe'. Your messages to mailman should have nothing
other than the commands 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' in them. Both
lists are archived on the IETF web site,
http://www.ietf.org/maillist.html.
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Do not, ever, under any circumstances, for any reason, send a request
to join a list to the list itself! The thousands of people on the
list don't need, or want, to know when a new person joins.
Similarly, when changing email addresses or leaving a list, send your
request only to the "-request" address, not to the main list. This
means you!!
The IETF discussion list is unmoderated. This means that all can
express their opinions about issues affecting the Internet. However,
it is not a place for companies or individuals to solicit or
advertise, as noted in [BCP45], "IETF Discussion List Charter". It
is a good idea to read the whole RFC (it's short!) before posting to
the IETF discussion list. Actually, the list does have two
"sergeants at arms" who keep an eye open for inappropriate postings,
and there is a process for banning persistent offenders from the
list, but fortunately this is extremely rare.
Only the Secretariat and certain IETF office holders can approve
messages sent to the announcement list, although those messages can
come from a variety of people.
Even though the IETF mailing lists "represent" the IETF membership at
large, it is important to note that attending an IETF meeting does
not mean you'll be automatically added to either mailing list.
4. IETF Meetings
The computer industry is rife with conferences, seminars,
expositions, and all manner of other kinds of meetings. IETF face-
to-face meetings are nothing like these. The meetings, held three
times a year, are week-long "gatherings of the tribes" whose primary
goal is to reinvigorate the WGs to get their tasks done, and whose
secondary goal is to promote a fair amount of mixing between the WGs
and the areas. The cost of the meetings is paid by the people
attending and by the corporate host for each meeting (if any),
although IASA kicks in additional funds for things such as the audio
broadcast of some Working Group sessions.
For many people, IETF meetings are a breath of fresh air when
compared to the standard computer industry conferences. There is no
exposition hall, few tutorials, and no big-name industry pundits.
Instead, there is lots of work, as well as a fair amount of time for
socializing. IETF meetings are of little interest to sales and
marketing folks, but of high interest to engineers and developers.
Most IETF meetings are held in North America, because that's where
most of the participants are from; however, meetings are held on
other continents about once every year. The past few meetings have
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had about 1,300 attendees. There have been more than 65 IETF
meetings so far, and a list of upcoming meetings is available on the
IETF web pages, http://www.ietf.org/meetings/0mtg-sites.txt.
Newcomers to IETF face-to-face meetings are often in a bit of shock.
They expect them to be like other standards bodies, or like computer
conferences. Fortunately, the shock wears off after a day or two,
and many new attendees get quite animated about how much fun they are
having. One particularly jarring feature of recent IETF meetings is
the use of wireless Internet connections throughout the meeting
space. It is common to see people in a WG meeting apparently reading
email or perusing the web during presentations they find
uninteresting. Remember, however, that they may also be consulting
the drafts under discussion, looking up relevant material online, or
following another meeting using instant messaging.
4.1. Registration
To attend an IETF meeting, you have to register and you have to pay
the registration fee. The meeting site and advance registration are
announced about two months ahead of the meeting -- earlier if
possible. An announcement goes out via email to the IETF-announce
mailing list, and information is posted on the IETF web site,
http://www.ietf.org, that same day.
To pre-register, you must submit your registration on the web. You
may pre-register and pre-pay, pre-register and return to the web site
later to pay with a credit card, pre-register and pay on-site at the
meeting, or register and pay on-site. To get a lower registration
fee, you must pay by the early registration deadline (about one week
before the meeting). The registration fee covers all of the week's
meetings, the Sunday evening reception (cash bar), daily continental
breakfasts, and afternoon coffee and snack breaks.
Credit card payments on the web are encrypted and secure, or, if you
prefer, you can use Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) to send your payment
information to the Registrar (mailto:ietf-registrar@ietf.org).
Registration is open throughout the week of the meeting. However,
the Secretariat highly recommends that attendees arrive for early
registration, usually beginning at noon on Sunday and continuing
throughout the Sunday evening reception. The reception is a popular
event where you can get a small bite to eat and socialize with other
early arrivals.
Registered attendees (and there aren't any other kind) receive a
registration packet. It contains much useful information, including
a general orientation sheet, the most recent agenda, and a name tag.
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Attendees who pre-paid will also find their receipt in their packet.
It's worth noting that neither attendee names and addresses nor IETF
mailing lists are ever offered for sale.
In your registration packet is a sheet titled "Note Well". You
should indeed read it carefully because it lays out the rules for
IETF intellectual property rights.
If you need to leave messages for other attendees, you can do so at
the cork boards that are often near the registration desk. These
cork boards will also have last-minute meeting changes and room
changes.
You can also turn in lost-and-found items to the registration desk.
At the end of the meeting, anything left over from the lost and found
will usually be turned over to the hotel or brought back to the
Secretariat's office.
Incidentally, the IETF registration desk is often a convenient place
to arrange to meet people. If someone says "meet me at
registration", they almost always mean the IETF registration desk,
not the hotel registration desk.
4.2. Take the Plunge and Stay All Week!
IETF meetings last from Monday morning through Friday lunchtime.
Associated meetings often take place on the preceding or following
weekends. It is best to plan to be present the whole week, to
benefit from cross-fertilization between Working Groups and from
corridor discussions. As noted below, the agenda is fluid, and there
have been many instances of participants missing important sessions
due to last-minute scheduling changes after their travel plans were
fixed. Being present the whole week is the only way to avoid this
annoyance.
If you cannot find meetings all week to interest you, you can still
make the most of the IETF meeting by working between sessions. Most
IETF attendees carry laptop computers, and it is common to see many
of them in the terminal room or in the hallways working during
meeting sessions. There is often good wireless Internet coverage in
many places of the meeting venue (restaurants, coffee shops, and so
on), so catching up on email when not in meetings is a fairly common
task for IETFers.
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4.3. Newcomer Training
Newcomers are encouraged to attend the Newcomer Training, which is
especially designed for first-time attendees. The orientation is
organized and conducted by the IETF EDU team and is intended to
provide useful introductory information. The session covers what's
in the attendee packets, what all the dots on name tags mean, the
structure of the IETF, and many other essential and enlightening
topics for new IETFers.
Immediately following the Newcomers' Training is the IETF Standards
Process Orientation. This session demystifies much of the standards
process by explaining what stages a document has to pass through on
its way to becoming a standard, and what has to be done to advance to
the next stage.
There is usually ample time at the end for questions. The
Secretariat provides hard copies of the slides of the "IETF Structure
and Internet Standards Process" presentation -- these very useful
slides are also available online at www.ietf.org under "Educational
Materials".
The orientation is normally held on Sunday afternoon, along with
tutorials of interest to newcomers and old-timers alike. Check the
agenda for exact times and locations.
4.4. Dress Code
Since attendees must wear their name tags, they must also wear shirts
or blouses. Pants or skirts are also highly recommended. Seriously
though, many newcomers are often embarrassed when they show up Monday
morning in suits, to discover that everybody else is wearing T-
shirts, jeans (shorts, if weather permits) and sandals. There are
those in the IETF who refuse to wear anything other than suits.
Fortunately, they are well known (for other reasons) so they are
forgiven this particular idiosyncrasy. The general rule is "dress
for the weather" (unless you plan to work so hard that you won't go
outside, in which case, "dress for comfort" is the rule!).
4.5. Seeing Spots Before Your Eyes
Some of the people at the IETF will have a little colored dot on
their name tag. A few people have more than one. These dots
identify people who are silly enough to volunteer to do a lot of
extra work. The colors have the meanings shown here.
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Color Meaning
--------------------------------------
Blue Working Group/BOF chair
Green Host group
Red IAB member
Yellow IESG member
Orange Nominating Committee member
(Members of the press wear orange-tinted badges.)
Local hosts are the people who can answer questions about the
terminal room, restaurants, and points of interest in the area.
It is important that newcomers to the IETF not be afraid to strike up
conversations with people who wear these dots. If the IAB and IESG
members and Working Group and BOF chairs didn't want to talk to
anybody, they wouldn't be wearing the dots in the first place.
4.6. Terminal Room
One of the most important (depending on your point of view) things
the host does is provide Internet access for the meeting attendees.
In general, wired and wireless connectivity is excellent. This is
entirely due to the Olympian efforts of the local hosts and their
ability to beg, borrow, and steal. The people and companies that
donate their equipment, services, and time are to be heartily
congratulated and thanked.
Although preparation far in advance of the meeting is encouraged,
there may be some unavoidable "last minute" things that can be
accomplished in the terminal room. It may also be useful to people
who need to make trip reports or status reports while things are
still fresh in their minds.
You need to be wearing your badge in order to get into the terminal
room. The terminal room provides lots of power strips, lots of
Ethernet ports for laptops, wireless (for the people who don't need
Ethernet but want power), usually a printer for public use, and
sometimes workstations. What it doesn't provide are terminals; the
name is historical. The help desk in the terminal room is a good
place to ask questions about network failures, although they might
point you off to different networking staff.
4.7. Meals and Other Delights
Marshall Rose once remarked that the IETF was a place to go for "many
fine lunches and dinners". Although it is true that some people eat
very well at the IETF, they find the food on their own; lunches and
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dinners are not included in the registration fee. The Secretariat
does provide appetizers at the Sunday evening reception (not meant to
be a replacement for dinner), continental breakfast every morning,
and (best of all) cookies, brownies, and other yummies during
afternoon breaks.
If you prefer to get out of the hotel for meals, the local host
usually provides a list of places to eat within easy reach of the
meeting site.
4.8. Social Event
Another of the most important things organized and managed by the
host is the IETF social event. Sometimes, the social event is a
computer- or high-tech-related event. At one Boston IETF, for
example, the social was dinner at the Computer Museum. Other times,
the social might be a dinner cruise or a trip to an art gallery.
Note, however, that not all IETF meetings have social events.
Newcomers to the IETF are encouraged to attend the social event. All
are encouraged to wear their name tags and leave their laptops
behind. The social event is designed to give people a chance to meet
on a social, rather than technical, level.
4.9. Agenda
The agenda for the IETF meetings is a very fluid thing. It is
typically sent to the IETF announcement list a few times prior to the
meeting, and it is also available on the web. The final agenda is
included in the registration packets. Of course, "final" in the IETF
doesn't mean the same thing as it does elsewhere in the world. The
final agenda is simply the version that went to the printer. The
Secretariat will post agenda changes on the bulletin board near the
IETF registration desk (not the hotel registration desk). These late
changes are not capricious: they are made "just in time" as session
chairs and speakers become aware of unanticipated clashes. The IETF
is too dynamic for agendas to be tied down weeks in advance.
Assignments for breakout rooms (where the Working Groups and BOFs
meet) and a map showing the room locations are also shown on the
agenda. Room assignments can change as the agenda changes. Some
Working Groups meet multiple times during a meeting, and every
attempt is made to have a Working Group meet in the same room for
each session.
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4.10. EDU to the Rescue
If certain aspects of the IETF still mystify you (even after you
finish reading the Tao), you'll want to drop in on the on-site
training offered by the Education (EDU) team. These informal classes
are designed for newcomers and seasoned IETFers alike. In addition
to the Newcomer Training, the EDU team offers workshops for document
editors and Working Group chairs, plus an in-depth security tutorial
that's indispensable for both novices and longtime IETF attendees.
EDU sessions are generally held on Sunday afternoons. You'll find
more about the EDU team at http://edu.ietf.org/.
4.11. Where Do I Fit In?
The IETF is different things to different people. There are many
people who have been very active in the IETF who have never attended
an IETF meeting. You should not feel obligated to come to an IETF
meeting just to get a feel for the IETF. The following guidelines
(based on stereotypes of people in various industries) might help you
decide whether you actually want to come and, if so, what might be
the best use of your time at your first meeting.
4.11.1. IS Managers
As discussed throughout this document, an IETF meeting is nothing
like any trade show you have attended. IETF meetings are singularly
bad places to go if your intention is to find out what will be hot in
the Internet industry next year. You can safely assume that going to
Working Group meetings will confuse you more than it will help you
understand what is happening, or will be happening, in the industry.
This is not to say that no one from the industry should go to IETF
meetings. As an IS manager, you might want to consider sending
specific people who are responsible for technologies that are under
development in the IETF. As these people read the current Internet
Drafts and the traffic on the relevant Working Group lists, they will
get a sense of whether or not their presence would be worthwhile for
your company or for the Working Groups.
4.11.2. Network Operators and ISPs
Running a network is hard enough without having to grapple with new
protocols or new versions of the protocols with which you are already
dealing. If you work for the type of network that is always using
the very latest hardware and software, and you are following the
relevant Working Groups in your copious free time, you could
certainly find participating in the IETF valuable. A fair amount of
IETF work also covers many other parts of operations of ISPs and
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large enterprises, and the input of operators is quite valuable to
keep this work vibrant and relevant. Many of the best operations
documents from the IETF come from real-world operators, not vendors
and academics.
4.11.3. Networking Hardware and Software Vendors
The image of the IETF being mostly ivory tower academics may have
been true in the past, but the jobs of typical attendees are now in
industry. In most areas of the IETF, employees of vendors are the
ones writing the protocols and leading the Working Groups, so it's
completely appropriate for vendors to attend. If you create Internet
hardware or software, and no one from your company has ever attended
an IETF meeting, it behooves you to come to a meeting if for no other
reason than to tell the others how relevant the meeting was or was
not to your business.
This is not to say that companies should close up shop during IETF
meeting weeks so everyone can go to the meeting. Marketing folks,
even technical marketing folks, are usually safe in staying away from
the IETF as long as some of the technical people from the company are
at the meeting. Similarly, it isn't required, or likely useful, for
everyone from a technical department to go, particularly if they are
not all reading the Internet Drafts and following the Working Group
mailing lists. Many companies have just a few designated meeting
attendees who are chosen for their ability to do complete and useful
trip reports. In addition, many companies have internal coordination
efforts and a standards strategy. If a company depends on the
Internet for some or all of its business, the strategy should
probably cover the IETF.
4.11.4. Academics
IETF meetings are often excellent places for computer science folks
to find out what is happening in the way of soon-to-be-deployed
protocols. Professors and grad students (and sometimes overachieving
undergrads) who are doing research in networking or communications
can get a wealth of information by following Working Groups in their
specific fields of interest. Wandering into different Working Group
meetings can have the same effect as going to symposia and seminars
in your department. Researchers are also, of course, likely to be
interested in IRTF activities.
4.11.5. Computer Trade Press
If you're a member of the press and are considering attending IETF,
we've prepared a special section of the Tao just for you -- please
see Section 10.2.
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4.12. Proceedings
IETF proceedings are compiled in the two months following each
meeting and are available on the web and on CD. Be sure to look
through a copy -- the proceedings are filled with information about
IETF that you're not likely to find anywhere else. For example,
you'll find snapshots of most WG charters at the time of the meeting,
giving you a better understanding of the evolution of any given
effort.
The proceedings sometimes start with an informative (and highly
entertaining) message. Each volume contains the final (hindsight)
agenda, an IETF overview, area and Working Group reports, and slides
from the protocol and technical presentations. The Working Group
reports and presentations are sometimes incomplete, if the materials
haven't been turned in to the Secretariat in time for publication.
An attendee list is also included, which contains names and
affiliations as provided on the registration form. For information
about obtaining copies of the proceedings, see the web listing at
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/directory.html.
4.13. Other General Things
The IETF Secretariat, and IETFers in general, are very approachable.
Never be afraid to approach someone and introduce yourself. Also,
don't be afraid to ask questions, especially when it comes to jargon
and acronyms.
Hallway conversations are very important. A lot of very good work
gets done by people who talk together between meetings and over
lunches and dinners. Every minute of the IETF can be considered work
time (much to some people's dismay).
A "bar BOF" is an unofficial get-together, usually in the late
evening, during which a lot of work gets done over drinks. Bar BOFs
spring up in many different places around an IETF meeting, such as
restaurants, coffee shops, and (if we are so lucky) pools.
It's unwise to get between a hungry IETFer (and there isn't any other
kind) and coffee break brownies and cookies, no matter how
interesting a hallway conversation is.
IETFers are fiercely independent. It's safe to question opinions and
offer alternatives, but don't expect an IETFer to follow orders.
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The IETF meetings, and the plenary session in particular, are not
places for vendors to try to sell their wares. People can certainly
answer questions about their company and its products, but bear in
mind that the IETF is not a trade show. This does not preclude
people from recouping costs for IETF-related T-shirts, buttons, and
pocket protectors.
There is always a "materials distribution table" near the
registration desk. This desk is used to make appropriate information
available to the attendees (e.g., copies of something discussed in a
Working Group session, descriptions of online IETF-related
information). Please check with the Secretariat before placing
materials on the desk; the Secretariat has the right to remove
material that he or she feels is not appropriate.
If you rely on your laptop during the meeting, it is a good idea to
bring an extra battery. It is not always easy to find a spare outlet
in some meeting rooms, and using the wireless access can draw down
your battery faster than you might expect. If you are sitting near a
power-strip in a meeting room, expect to be asked to plug and unplug
for others around you. Many people bring an extension cord with
spare outlets, which is a good way to make friends with your neighbor
in a meeting. If you need an outlet adapter, you should try to buy
it in advance because the one you need is usually easier to find in
your home country.
5. Working Groups
The vast majority of the IETF's work is done in many Working Groups;
at the time of this writing, there are about 115 different WGs. (The
term "Working Group" is often seen capitalized, but probably not for
any good reason.) [BCP25], "IETF Working Group Guidelines and
Procedures", is an excellent resource for anyone participating in WG
discussions.
A WG is really just a mailing list with a bit of adult supervision.
You "join" the WG by subscribing to the mailing list; all mailing
lists are open to anyone. Anyone can post to a WG mailing list,
although most lists require non-subscribers to have their postings
moderated. Each Working Group has one or two chairs.
More important, each WG has a charter that the WG is supposed to
follow. The charter states the scope of discussion for the Working
Group, as well as its goals. The WG's mailing list and face-to-face
meetings are supposed to focus on just what is in the charter and not
to wander off on other "interesting" topics. Of course, looking a
bit outside the scope of the WG is occasionally useful, but the large
majority of the discussion should be on the topics listed in the
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charter. In fact, some WG charters actually specify what the WG will
not do, particularly if there were some attractive but nebulous
topics brought up during the drafting of the charter. The list of
all WG charters makes interesting reading for folks who want to know
what the different Working Groups are supposed to be doing.
5.1. Working Group Chairs
The role of the WG chairs is described in both [BCP11] and [BCP25].
The IETF EDU team also offers special training for WG chairs on
Sunday afternoons preceding IETF.
As volunteer cat-herders, a chair's first job is to determine the WG
consensus goals and milestones, keeping the charter up to date.
Next, often with the help of WG secretaries or document editors, the
chair must manage WG discussion, both on the list and by scheduling
meetings when appropriate. Sometimes discussions get stuck on
contentious points and the chair may need to steer people toward
productive interaction and then declare when rough consensus has been
met and the discussion is over. Sometimes chairs also manage
interactions with non-WG participants or the IESG, especially when a
WG document approaches publication. Chairs have responsibility for
the technical and non-technical quality of WG output. As you can
imagine given the mix of secretarial, interpersonal, and technical
demands, some Working Group chairs are much better at their jobs than
others.
When a WG has fulfilled its charter, it is supposed to cease
operations. (Most WG mailing lists continue on after a WG is closed,
still discussing the same topics as the Working Group did.) In the
IETF, it is a mark of success that the WG closes up because it
fulfilled its charter. This is one of the aspects of the IETF that
newcomers who have experience with other standards bodies have a hard
time understanding. However, some WG chairs never manage to get
their WG to finish, or keep adding new tasks to the charter so that
the Working Group drags on for many years. The output of these aging
WGs is often not nearly as useful as the earlier products, and the
messy results are sometimes attributed to what's called "degenerative
Working Group syndrome".
There is an official distinction between WG drafts and independent
drafts, but in practice, sometimes there is not much procedural
difference. For example, many WG mailing lists also discuss
independent drafts (at the discretion of the WG chair). Procedures
for Internet Drafts are covered in much more detail later in this
document.
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WG chairs are strongly advised to go to the WG leadership training
that usually happens on the Sunday preceding the IETF meeting. There
is also usually a WG chairs lunch mid-week during the meeting where
chair-specific topics are presented and discussed. If you're
interested in what they hear there, take a look at the slides at
http://edu.ietf.org/.
5.2. Getting Things Done in a Working Group
One fact that confuses many novices is that the face-to-face WG
meetings are much less important in the IETF than they are in most
other organizations. Any decision made at a face-to-face meeting
must also gain consensus on the WG mailing list. There are numerous
examples of important decisions made in WG meetings that are later
overturned on the mailing list, often because someone who couldn't
attend the meeting pointed out a serious flaw in the logic used to
come to the decision. Finally, WG meetings aren't "drafting
sessions", as they are in some other standards bodies: in the IETF,
drafting is done elsewhere.
Another aspect of Working Groups that confounds many people is the
fact that there is no formal voting. The general rule on disputed
topics is that the Working Group has to come to "rough consensus",
meaning that a very large majority of those who care must agree. The
exact method of determining rough consensus varies from Working Group
to Working Group. Sometimes consensus is determined by "humming" --
if you agree with a proposal, you hum when prompted by the chair; if
you disagree, you keep your silence. Newcomers find it quite
peculiar, but it works. It is up to the chair to decide when the
Working Group has reached rough consensus.
The lack of formal voting has caused some very long delays for some
proposals, but most IETF participants who have witnessed rough
consensus after acrimonious debates feel that the delays often result
in better protocols. (And, if you think about it, how could you have
"voting" in a group that anyone can join, and when it's impossible to
count the participants?) Rough consensus has been defined in many
ways; a simple version is that it means that strongly held objections
must be debated until most people are satisfied that these objections
are wrong.
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Some Working Groups have complex documents or a complex set of
documents (or even both). Shaking all the bugs out of one or more
complex documents is a daunting task. In order to help relieve this
problem, some Working Groups use "issue trackers", which are online
lists of the open issues with the documents, the status of the issue,
proposed fixes, and so on. Using an issue tracker not only helps the
WG not to forget to do something important, it helps when someone
asks a question later about why something was done in a particular
fashion.
Another method that some Working Groups adopt is to have a Working
Group "secretary" to handle the juggling of the documents and the
changes. The secretary can run the issue tracker if there is one, or
can simply be in charge of watching that all of the decisions that
are made on the mailing list are reflected in newer versions of the
documents.
One thing you might find helpful, and possibly even entertaining,
during Working Group sessions is to follow the running commentary on
the Jabber room associated with that Working Group. The running
commentary is often used as the basis for the minutes of the meeting,
but it can also include jokes, sighs, and other extraneous chatter.
Jabber is a free, streaming XML technology mainly used for instant
messaging. You can find pointers to Jabber clients for many
platforms at http://www.jabber.org. The Jabber chatrooms have the
name of the Working Group followed by "@jabber.ietf.org". Those
rooms are, in fact, available year-round, not just during IETF
meetings, and some are used by active Working Group participants
during protocol development.
5.3. Preparing for Working Group Meetings
The most important thing that everyone (newcomers and seasoned
experts) should do before coming to a face-to-face meeting is to read
the Internet Drafts and RFCs ahead of time. WG meetings are
explicitly not for education: they are for developing the group's
documents. Even if you do not plan to say anything in the meeting,
you should read the group's documents before attending so you can
understand what is being said.
It's up to the WG chair to set the meeting agenda, usually a few
weeks in advance. If you want something discussed at the meeting, be
sure to let the chair know about it. The agendas for all the WG
meetings are available in advance (see
http://www.ietf.org/meetings/wg_agenda_xx.html, where 'xx' is the
meeting number), but many WG chairs are lax (if not totally
negligent) about turning them in.
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The Secretariat only schedules WG meetings a few weeks in advance,
and the schedule often changes as little as a week before the first
day. If you are only coming for one WG meeting, you may have a hard
time booking your flight with such little notice, particularly if the
Working Group's meeting changes schedule. Be sure to keep track of
the current agenda so you can schedule flights and hotels. But, when
it comes down to it, you probably shouldn't be coming for just one WG
meeting. It's likely that your knowledge could be valuable in a few
WGs, assuming that you've read the drafts and RFCs for those groups.
If you are on the agenda at a face-to-face meeting, you should
probably come with a few slides prepared. But don't come with a
tutorial; people are supposed to read the drafts in advance.
Projectors for laptop-based presentations are available in all the
meeting rooms.
And here's a tip for your slides in WG or plenary presentations:
don't put your company's logo on every one, even though that is a
common practice outside the IETF. The IETF frowns on this kind of
corporate advertising (except for the meeting sponsor in the plenary
presentation), and most presenters don't even put their logo on their
opening slide. The IETF is about technical content, not company
boosterism. Slides are often plain black and white for legibility,
with color used only when it really adds clarity. Again, the content
is the most important part of the slides, not how it's presented.
5.4. Working Group Mailing Lists
As we mentioned earlier, the IETF announcement and discussion mailing
lists are the central mailing lists for IETF activities. However,
there are many other mailing lists related to IETF work. For
example, every Working Group has its own discussion list. In
addition, there are some long-term technical debates that have been
moved off of the IETF list onto lists created specifically for those
topics. It is highly recommended that you follow the discussions on
the mailing lists of the Working Groups that you wish to attend. The
more work that is done on the mailing lists, the less work that will
need to be done at the meeting, leaving time for cross pollination
(i.e., attending Working Groups outside one's primary area of
interest in order to broaden one's perspective).
The mailing lists also provide a forum for those who wish to follow,
or contribute to, the Working Groups' efforts, but can't attend the
IETF meetings. That's why IETF procedures require all decisions to
be confirmed "on the list" and you will often hear a WG chair say,
"Let's take it to the list" to close a discussion.
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Many IETF discussion lists use either mailman or another list
manager, Majordomo. They usually have a "-request" address that
handles the administrative details of joining and leaving the list.
(See Section 3.3 for more information on mailman.) It is generally
frowned upon when such administrivia appears on the discussion
mailing list.
Most IETF discussion lists are archived. That is, all of the
messages sent to the list are automatically stored on a host for
anonymous HTTP or FTP access. Many such archives are listed online
at ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf-mail-archive/ or they are in a web-based
archive. If you don't find the list you're looking for, send a
message to the list's "-request" address (not to the list itself!).
The Working Group charter listings at
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/wg-dir.html are a useful source;
note that the page has links to old, concluded WGs.
Some WG lists apply size limits on messages, particularly to avoid
large documents or presentations landing in everyone's mailbox. It
is well worth remembering that participants do not all have broadband
connections (and even those with broadband connections sometimes get
their mail on slow connections when they travel), so shorter messages
are greatly appreciated. Documents can be posted as Internet Drafts;
presentation material can be posted to a web site controlled by the
sender or sent personally to people who ask for it. Some WGs set up
special sites to hold these large documents so that senders can post
there first, then just send to the list the URL of the document.
5.5. Interim Working Group Meetings
Working Groups sometimes hold interim meetings between IETFs.
Interim meetings aren't a substitute for IETF meetings, however -- a
group can't decide to skip a meeting in a location they're not fond
of and meet in Cancun (or even someplace mundane) three weeks later,
for example. Interim meetings require AD approval and need to be
announced at least one month in advance. Location and timing need to
allow fair access for all participants. Like regular IETF meetings,
someone needs to take notes and send them to
mailto:proceedings@ietf.org, and the group needs to take attendance.
Decisions tentatively made during an interim WG meeting still must be
ratified on the mailing list.
6. BOFs
In order to form a Working Group, you need a charter and someone who
is able to be chair. In order to get those things, you need to get
people interested so that they can help focus the charter and
convince an Area Director that the project is worthwhile. A face-
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to-face meeting is useful for this. In fact, very few WGs get
started by an Area Director; most start after a face-to-face BOF
because attendees have expressed interest in the topic.
A Birds of a Feather (BOF) meeting has to be approved by the Area
Director in the relevant area before it can be scheduled. If you
think you really need a new WG, approach an AD informally with your
proposal and see what he or she thinks. The next step is to request
a meeting slot at the next face-to-face meeting. Of course, you
don't need to wait for that meeting to get some work done, such as
setting up a mailing list and starting to discuss a charter.
BOF meetings have a very different tone than do WG meetings. The
purpose of a BOF is to make sure that a good charter with good
milestones can be created and that there are enough people willing to
do the work needed in order to create standards. Some BOFs have
Internet Drafts already in process, whereas others start from
scratch.
An advantage of having a draft before the BOF is to help focus the
discussion. On the other hand, having a draft might tend to limit
what the other folks in the BOF want to do in the charter. It's
important to remember that most BOFs are held in order to get support
for an eventual Working Group, not to get support for a particular
document.
Many BOFs don't turn into WGs for a variety of reasons. A common
problem is that not enough people can agree on a focus for the work.
Another typical reason is that the work wouldn't end up being a
standard -- if, for example, the document authors don't really want
to relinquish change control to a WG. (We'll discuss change control
later in this document.) Only two meetings of a BOF can be scheduled
on a particular subject; either a WG has to form or the topic should
be dropped.
7. New to the IETF and Coming to a Meeting? STOP HERE! (Temporarily)
If you're new to the IETF and this is the only reference you plan to
read before coming to the meeting, stop here -- at least temporarily.
Then, on your flight home, read the rest of the Tao. By that time
you'll be ready to get actively involved in the Working Groups that
interested you at the meeting, and the Tao will get you started on
your way.
If you're planning to participate in the IETF remotely, through
reading email lists and the proceedings, read on!
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8. RFCs and Internet Drafts
If you're a new IETF participant and are looking for a particular RFC
or Internet Draft, go to the RFC Editor's web pages, http://www.rfc-
editor.org/rfc.html. That site also has links to other RFC
collections, many with search capabilities. If you know the number
of the RFC you're looking for, go to the IETF RFC pages,
http://www.ietf.org/rfc.html. For Internet Drafts, the best resource
is the IETF web site, http://www.ietf.org/ID.html, where you can
search by title and keyword.
8.1. Getting an RFC Published
One of the most common questions seasoned IETFers hear from newcomers
is, "How do I get an IETF standard published?" A much better
question is, "Should I write an IETF standard?" since the answer is
not always "yes." If you do decide to try to write a document that
becomes an IETF standard, be warned that the overall process may be
arduous, even if the individual steps are fairly straightforward.
Lots of people get through the process unscathed, though, and there's
plenty of written guidance that helps authors emerge with their ego
more or less intact.
Every IETF standard is published as an RFC (a "Request for Comments,"
but everyone just calls them RFCs), and every RFC starts out as an
Internet Draft (often called an "I-D"). The basic steps for getting
something published as an IETF standard are as follows:
1. Publish the document as an Internet Draft.
2. Receive comments on the draft.
3. Edit your draft based on the comments.
4. Repeat steps 1 through 3 a few times.
5. Ask an Area Director to take the draft to the IESG (if it's an
individual submission). If the draft is an official Working
Group product, the WG chair asks the AD to take it to the IESG.
6. Make any changes deemed necessary by the IESG (this might include
giving up on becoming a standard).
7. Wait for the document to be published by the RFC Editor.
A much more complete explanation of these steps is contained in
[BCP9], "The Internet Standards Process". Those who write drafts
that they hope will become IETF standards must read BCP 9 so that
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they can follow the path of their document through the process. BCP
9 (and various other documents that update it) goes into great detail
on a topic that is very often misunderstood, even by seasoned IETF
participants: different types of RFCs go through different processes
and have different rankings. There are six kinds of RFCs:
o Proposed standards
o Draft standards
o Internet standards (sometimes called "full standards")
o Informational documents
o Experimental protocols
o Historic documents
Only the first three (proposed, draft, and full) are standards within
the IETF. A good summary of this can be found in the aptly titled
[RFC1796], "Not All RFCs Are Standards".
There are also three sub-series of RFCs, known as FYIs, BCPs, and
STDs. The For Your Information RFC sub-series was created to
document overviews and topics that are introductory or that appeal to
a broad audience; however, that series has not been added to in a
long time. Best Current Practice documents describe the application
of various technologies in the Internet. The STD RFC sub-series was
created to identify RFCs that do in fact specify Internet standards.
Some STDs are actually sets of more than one RFC, and the "standard"
designation applies to the whole set of documents.
8.2. Letting Go Gracefully
The biggest reason some people do not want their documents put on the
IETF standards track is that they must give up change control of the
protocol. That is, as soon as you propose that your protocol become
an IETF standard, you must fully relinquish control of the protocol.
If there is general agreement, parts of the protocol can be
completely changed, whole sections can be ripped out, new things can
be added, and the name can be changed.
Some authors find it very hard to give up control of their pet
protocol. If you are one of those people, don't even think about
trying to get your protocol to become an IETF standard. On the other
hand, if your goal is the best standard possible with the widest
implementation, then you might find the IETF process to your liking.
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Incidentally, the change control on Internet standards doesn't end
when the protocol is put on the standards track. The protocol itself
can be changed later for a number of reasons, the most common of
which is that implementors discover a problem as they implement the
standard. These later changes are also under the control of the
IETF, not the editors of the standards document.
IETF standards exist so that people will use them to write Internet
programs that interoperate. They don't exist to document the
(possibly wonderful) ideas of their authors, nor do they exist so
that a company can say, "We have an IETF standard". If a standards-
track RFC only has one implementation (whereas two are required for
it to advance on the standards track), it was probably a mistake to
put it on the standards track in the first place.
8.3. Internet Drafts
First things first. Every document that ends up in the RFC
repository starts life as an Internet Draft. Internet Drafts are
tentative documents -- they're meant for readers to comment on, so
authors can mull over those comments and decide which ones to
incorporate in the draft. In order to remind folks of their
tentativeness, Internet Drafts are automatically removed from the
online directories after six months. They are most definitely not
standards or even specifications. As [BCP9] says:
"An Internet Draft is NOT a means of 'publishing' a specification;
specifications are published through the RFC mechanism.... Internet
Drafts have no formal status, and are subject to change or removal at
any time. Under no circumstances should an Internet Draft be
referenced by any paper, report, or Request-for-Proposal, nor should
a vendor claim compliance with an Internet Draft".
You can always tell a person who doesn't understand the IETF (or is
intentionally trying to fool people) when he or she brags about
having published an Internet Draft; it takes no significant effort.
When you submit an Internet Draft, you give some publication rights
to the IETF. This is so that your Internet Draft is freely available
to everyone who wants to read and comment on it. The rights you do
and don't give to the IETF are described in [BCP78], "IETF Rights in
Contributions".
There is a very useful checking tool at
http://tools.ietf.org/tools/idnits/idnits.pyht. Using this tool
before you turn in an Internet Draft will help prevent the draft from
being rejected due to errors in form and formatting.
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An I-D should have approximately the same format as an RFC. Contrary
to many people's beliefs, an I-D does not need to look exactly like
an RFC, but if you can use the same formatting procedures used by the
RFC Editor when you create your I-Ds, it will simplify the RFC
Editor's work when your draft is published as an RFC. [RFC2223],
"Instructions to RFC Authors", describes the nroff formatting used by
the RFC Editor. There is also a tool called "xml2rfc", available
from http://xml.resource.org/, that takes XML-formatted text and
turns it into a valid Internet Draft.
An Internet Draft can be either a Working Group draft or an
individual submission. Working Group drafts are usually reviewed by
the Working Group before being accepted as a WG item, although the
chairs have the final say.
If you're interested in checking the status of a particular draft, or
can't remember its exact name, or want to find out which drafts a WG
is working on, two handy tools are available. The "Internet Drafts
Database Interface", at
https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/idindex.cgi, lets you search for
a draft by author, Working Group, date, or filename. The "I-D
Tracker", at https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/pidtracker.cgi, is
especially useful for authors who want to track the progress of their
draft as it makes its way through the publication process.
There are some informal rules for Internet Draft naming that have
evolved over the years. Internet Drafts that revise existing RFCs
often have draft names with "bis" in them, meaning "again" or
"twice"; for example, a draft might be called "draft-someone-
rfc2345bis-00.txt".
8.3.1. Recommended Reading for Writers
Before you create the first draft of your Internet Draft, you should
read four documents:
o More important than just explaining formatting, [RFC2223] also
explains what needs to be in an Internet Draft before it can
become an RFC. This document describes all the sections and
notices that will need to be in your document, and it's good to
have them there from the beginning so that readers aren't
surprised when you put them in later versions.
o [BCP22], "Guide for Internet Standards Writers", provides tips
that will help you write a standard that leads to
interoperability. For instance, it explains how to choose the
right number of protocol options, how to respond to out-of-spec
behavior, and how to show state diagrams.
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o The online "Guidelines to Authors of Internet Drafts",
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-guidelines.txt, has up-to-date
information about the process for turning in Internet Drafts, as
well as the most current boilerplate information that has to be
included in each Internet Draft.
o When you think you are finished with the draft process and are
ready to request that the draft become an RFC, you should
definitely read "Checklist for Internet Drafts (I-Ds) Submitted
for RFC Publication", http://www.ietf.org/ID-Checklist.html, a
list of common issues that have been known to stop documents in
the IESG. In fact, you should probably read that document well
before you are finished, so that you don't have to make a bunch of
last-minute changes.
Also, you should visit the IETF Tools web pages,
http://tools.ietf.org, where you'll find pointers to other tools that
will automate some of your work for the IETF.
8.3.2. Filenames and Other Matters
When you're ready to turn in your Internet Draft, send it to the
Internet Drafts administrator at mailto:internet-drafts@ietf.org.
There is a real person at the other end of this mail address, whose
job is to make sure you've included the minimum items you need for
the Internet Draft to be published. When you submit the first
version of the draft, you also tell the draft administrator your
proposed filename for the draft. If the draft is an official Working
Group product, the name will start with "draft-ietf-" followed by the
designation of the WG, followed by a descriptive word or two,
followed by "00.txt".
For example, a draft in the S/MIME WG about creating keys might be
named "draft-ietf-smime-keying-00.txt". If it's not the product of a
Working Group, the name will start with "draft-" and the last name of
one of the authors followed by a descriptive word or two, followed by
"00.txt". For example, a draft that someone named Smith wrote might
be named "draft-smith-keying-00.txt". If a draft is an individual
submission but relates to a particular Working Group, authors
sometimes follow their name with the name of the Working Group, such
as "draft-smith-smime-keying-00.txt". You are welcome to suggest
names; however, it is up to the Internet Drafts administrator (and,
if it is an official WG draft, the WG chair) to come up with the
filename. If you follow the naming guidelines given at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-guidelines.txt, chances are quite good
that your suggested filename will be fine.
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After the first edition of a draft, the number in the filename is
incremented; for instance, the second edition of the S/MIME draft
named above would be "draft-ietf-smime-keying-01.txt". Note that
there are cases where the filename changes after one or more
versions, such as when a personal effort is pulled into a Working
Group; when a draft has its filename changed, the number reverts to
-00. Be sure to let the Internet Drafts administrator know the
previous name of the draft when such a name change occurs so that the
databases can be kept accurate.
8.4. Standards-Track RFCs
The procedure for creating and advancing a standard is described in
[BCP9]. After an Internet Draft has been sufficiently discussed and
there is rough consensus that what it says would be a useful
standard, it is presented to the IESG for consideration. If the
draft is an official WG draft, the WG chair sends it to the
appropriate Area Director after it has gone through Working Group
last call. If the draft is an individual submission, the draft's
author or editor submits it to the appropriate Area Director. BCP 9
also describes the appeals process for people who feel that a Working
Group chair, an AD, or the IESG has made the wrong decision in
considering the creation or advancement of a standard.
After the I-D is submitted to the IESG, the IESG announces an IETF-
wide last call. This helps get the attention of people who weren't
following the progress of the draft, and it can sometimes cause
further changes to the draft. It is also a time when people in the
WG who feel that they weren't heard can make their comments to
everyone. The IETF last call is two weeks for drafts coming from WGs
and four weeks for individual submissions.
If the IESG approves the draft to become an Internet standard, they
ask the RFC Editor to publish it as a Proposed standard. After it
has been a Proposed standard for at least six months, the RFC's
author (or the appropriate WG chair) can ask for it to become a Draft
standard. Before that happens, however, someone needs to convince
the appropriate Area Director that there are at least two
independent, interoperable implementations of each part of the
standard. This is a good test of the usefulness of the standard as a
whole, as well as an excellent way to check if the standard was
really readable.
A few things typically happen at this point. First, it's common to
find that some of the specifications in the standard need to be
reworded because one implementor thought they meant one thing whereas
another implementor thought they meant something else. Another
common occurrence is that none of the implementations actually tried
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to implement a few of the features of the standard; these features
get removed not just because no one tested them but also because they
weren't needed.
Don't be surprised if a particular standard doesn't progress from
Proposed to Draft. In fact, most of the standards in common use are
Proposed standards and never move forward. This may be because no
one took the time to try to get them to Draft, or some of the
normative references in the standard are still at Proposed standard,
or it may be that everyone found more important things to do.
A few years after a document has been a Draft standard, it can become
an Internet standard, also known as "full standard" (it can happen in
as little as four months, but this is rare). This doesn't happen
often, and it is usually reserved for protocols that are absolutely
required for the Internet to function. The IESG goes over the
document with a fine-tooth comb and looks for evidence of widespread
deployment before making a Draft standard an Internet standard.
8.4.1. Telling It Like It Is -- Using MUST and SHOULD and MAY
Writing specifications that get implemented the way you want is a bit
of an art. You can keep the specification very short, with just a
list of requirements, but that tends to cause implementors to take
too much leeway. If you instead make the specification very wordy
with lots of suggestions, implementors tend to miss the requirements
(and often disagree with your suggestions anyway). An optimal
specification is somewhere in between.
One way to make it more likely that developers will create
interoperable implementations of standards is to be clear about
what's being mandated in a specification. Early RFCs used all kinds
of expressions to explain what was needed, so implementors didn't
always know which parts were suggestions and which were requirements.
As a result, standards writers in the IETF generally agreed to limit
their wording to a few specific words with a few specific meanings.
[STD3], "Requirements for Internet Hosts -- Application and Support",
written way back in 1989, had a short list of words that had appeared
to be useful, namely, "must", "should", and "may". These definitions
were updated and further refined in [BCP14], "Key words for use in
RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", which is widely referenced in
current Internet standards. BCP 14 also specifically defines "must
not" and "should not", and it lists a few synonyms for the words
defined.
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In a standard, in order to make it clear that you're using the
definitions from BCP 14, you should do two things. First, refer to
BCP 14 (although most people refer to it as RFC 2119, because that's
what BCP 14 tells you to do), so that the reader knows how you're
defining your words. Second, you should point out which instances of
the words you are using come from BCP 14. The accepted practice for
this is to capitalize the words. That is why you see "MUST" and
"SHOULD" capitalized in IETF standards.
BCP 14 is a short document, and it should be read by everyone who is
reading or writing IETF standards. Although the definitions of
"must" and "must not" are fairly clear, the definitions of "should"
and "should not" cause a great deal of discussion in many WGs. When
reviewing an Internet Draft, the question is often raised, "Should
that sentence have a MUST or a SHOULD in it?" This is, indeed, a
very good question, because specifications shouldn't have gratuitous
MUSTs, but also should not have SHOULDs where a MUST is needed for
interoperability. This goes to the crux of the question of over-
specifying and under-specifying requirements in standards.
8.4.2. Normative References in Standards
One aspect of writing IETF standards that trips up many novices (and
quite a few long-time IETF folks) is the rule about how to make
"normative references" to non-IETF documents or to other RFCs in a
standard. A normative reference is a reference to a document that
must be followed in order to implement the standard. A non-normative
reference (sometimes called an "informative reference") is one that
is helpful to an implementor but is not needed.
An IETF standard may make a normative reference to any other
standards-track RFC that is at the same standards level or higher, or
to any "open standard" that has been developed outside the IETF. The
"same level or higher" rule means that before a standard can move
from Proposed to Draft, all of the RFCs for which there is a
normative reference must also be at Draft or Internet standard. This
rule gives implementors assurance that everything in a Draft standard
or Internet standard is quite stable, even the things referenced
outside the standard. This can also delay the publication of the
Draft or Internet standard by many months (sometimes even years)
while the other documents catch up.
There is no hard-and-fast rule about what is an "open standard", but
generally this means a stable standard that anyone can get a copy of
(although they might have to pay for it) and that was made by a
generally recognized standards group. If the external standard
changes, you have to reference the particular instantiation of that
standard in your specification, as with a designation of the date of
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the standard. Some external standards bodies don't make old
standards available, which is a problem for IETF standards that need
to be used in the future. When in doubt, a draft author should ask
the WG chair or appropriate Area Director if a particular external
standard can be used in an IETF standard.
8.4.3. IANA Considerations
More and more IETF standards require the registration of various
protocol parameters, such as named options in the protocol. As we
noted in Section 3.2.4, the main registry for all IETF standards has
long been IANA. Because of the large and diverse kinds of registries
that standards require, IANA needs to have specific information about
how to register parameters, what not to register, who (if anyone)
will decide what is to be registered, and so on.
Anyone writing an Internet standard that may need a new IANA registry
or new values in a current IANA registry needs to read [BCP26],
"Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs",
which describes how RFC authors should properly ask for IANA to start
or take over a registry. IANA also maintains registries that were
started long before BCP 26 was produced.
8.4.4. Security Considerations
One thing that's required in every RFC and Internet Draft is a
"Security Considerations" section. This section should describe any
known vulnerabilities of the protocol, possible threats, and
mechanisms or strategies to address them. Don't gloss over this
section -- in particular, don't say, "Here's our protocol, if you
want security, just use IPsec". This won't do at all, because it
doesn't answer the question of how IPsec interacts with your
protocol, and vice versa. Be sure to check with your Working Group
chair if you're not sure how to handle this section in your draft.
See [BCP72], "Guidelines for Writing RFC Text on Security
Considerations", for more information on writing good security
considerations sections.
8.4.5. Patents in IETF Standards
The problems of intellectual property have cropped up more and more
often in the past few years, particularly with respect to patents.
The goal of the IETF is to have its standards widely used and
validated in the marketplace. If creating a product that uses a
standard requires getting a license for a patent, people are less
likely to implement the standard. Not surprisingly, then, the
general rule has been "use good non-patented technology where
possible".
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Of course, this isn't always possible. Sometimes patents appear
after a standard has been established. Sometimes there's a patent on
something that is so valuable that there isn't a non-patented
equivalent. Sometimes the patent holder is generous and promises to
give all implementors of a standard a royalty-free license to the
patent, thereby making it almost as easy to implement as it would
have been if no patent existed.
The IETF's methods for dealing with patents in standards are a
subject of much debate. The official rules for all intellectual
property rights (IRP) in IETF documents (not just patents) are
covered in [BCP78] and [BCP79], "Intellectual Property Rights in IETF
Technology". Everyone who participates in IETF Working Groups will
probably find these documents interesting because they lay out the
rules that everyone agrees to follow.
Patent holders who freely allow their patents to be used by people
implementing IETF standards often get a great deal of goodwill from
the folks in the IETF. Such generosity is more common than you might
think. For example, RFC 1822 is a license from IBM for one of its
security patents, and the security community has responded very
favorably to IBM for this (whereas a number of other companies have
made themselves pariahs for their intractability on their security
patents).
If you are writing an Internet Draft and you know of a patent that
applies to the technology you're writing about, don't list the patent
in the document. Instead, consult the IETF IPR Disclosure Page
linked off the main IETF web site to determine how to proceed.
Intellectual property rights aren't mentioned in RFCs because RFCs
never change after they are published, but knowledge of IPR can
change at any time. Therefore, an IPR list in an RFC could be
incomplete and mislead the reader. [BCP9] provides specific text
that should be added to RFCs where the author knows of IPR issues.
8.5. Informational and Experimental RFCs
As we noted earlier, not all RFCs are standards. In fact, plenty of
important RFCs are not on the standards track at all. Currently,
there are two designations for RFCs that are not meant to be
standards: Informational, like the Tao, and Experimental. (There is
actually a third designation, Historic, but that is reserved for
documents that were on the standards track and have been removed due
to lack of current use, or that more recent thinking indicates the
technology is actually harmful to the Internet.)
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The role of Informational RFCs is often debated in the IETF. Many
people like having them, particularly for specifications that were
created outside the IETF but are referenced by IETF documents. They
are also useful for specifications that are the precursors for work
being done by IETF Working Groups. On the other hand, some people
refer to Informational RFCs as "standards" even though the RFCs are
not standards, usually to fool the gullible public about something
that the person is selling or supporting. When this happens, the
debate about Informational RFCs is renewed.
Experimental RFCs are for specifications that may be interesting, but
for which it is unclear if there will be much interest in
implementing them, or whether they will work once deployed. That is,
a specification might solve a problem, but if it is not clear that
many people think that the problem is important, or think that they
will bother fixing the problem with the specification, the
specification might be labeled an Experimental RFC. If, later, the
specification becomes popular (or proves that it works well), it can
be re-issued as a standards-track RFC. Experimental RFCs are also
used to get people to experiment with a technology that looks like it
might be standards-track material, but for which there are still
unanswered questions.
The IESG has created guidelines on how it chooses between
Informational and Experimental status:
http://www.ietf.org/u/ietfchair/info-exp.html. If you are creating a
document that you think might become an Experimental RFC, knowing the
current thinking will help you justify your proposed choice.
9. How to Contribute to the IETF
9.1. What You Can Do
*Read* -- Review the Internet Drafts in your area of expertise and
comment on them in the Working Groups. Participate in the discussion
in a friendly, helpful fashion, with the goal being the best Internet
standards possible. Listen much more than you speak. If you
disagree, debate the technical issues: never attack the people.
*Implement* -- Write programs that use the current Internet
standards. The standards aren't worth much unless they are available
to Internet users. Implement even the "minor" standards, since they
will become less minor if they appear in more software. Report any
problems you find with the standards to the appropriate Working Group
so that the standard can be clarified in later revisions. One of the
oft-quoted tenets of the IETF is "running code wins", so you can help
support the standards you want to become more widespread by creating
more running code.
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*Write* -- Edit or co-author Internet Drafts in your area of
expertise. Do this for the benefit of the Internet community, not to
get your name (or, even worse, your company's name) on a document.
Draft authors are subject to all kinds of technical (and sometimes
personal) criticism; receive it with equanimity and use it to improve
your draft in order to produce the best and most interoperable
standard.
9.2. What Your Company Can Do
*Share* -- Avoid proprietary standards. If you are an implementor,
exhibit a strong preference for IETF standards. If the IETF
standards aren't as good as the proprietary standards, work to make
the IETF standards better. If you're a purchaser, avoid products
that use proprietary standards that compete with the open standards
of the IETF and tell the companies you buy from that you are doing
so.
*Open Up* -- If your company controls a patent that is used in an
IETF standard, convince the company to make the patent available at
no cost to everyone who is implementing the standard. In the past
few years, patents have caused a lot of serious problems for Internet
standards because they prevent some companies from being able to
freely implement the standards. Fortunately, many companies have
generously offered unlimited licenses for particular patents in order
to help the IETF standards flourish. These companies are usually
rewarded with positive publicity for the fact that they are not as
greedy or short-sighted as other patent-holders.
*Join* -- Become a member of ISOC. More important, urge any company
that has benefited from the Internet to become a corporate member of
ISOC, since this has the greatest financial benefit for the group.
It will, of course, also benefit the Internet as a whole.
10. IETF and the Outside World
10.1. IETF and Other Standards Groups
As much as many IETF participants would like to think otherwise, the
IETF does not exist in a standards vacuum. There are many (perhaps
too many) other standards organizations whose decisions affect the
Internet. There are also a fair number of standards bodies that
ignored the Internet for a long time and now want to get a piece of
the action.
In general, the IETF tries to have cordial relationships with other
significant standards bodies. This isn't always easy, since many
other bodies have very different structures than the IETF does, and
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RFC 4677 The Tao of IETF September 2006
the IETF is mostly run by volunteers who would probably prefer to
write standards rather than meet with representatives from other
bodies. Even so, some other standards bodies make a great effort to
interact well with the IETF despite the obvious cultural differences.
At the time of this writing, the IETF has some liaisons with large
standards bodies, including the ITU (International Telecommunication
Union), the W3C, the Unicode Consortium, and ISO/IEC JTC1 (Joint
Technical Committee of the International Organization for
Standardization and International Electrotechnical Commission). As
stated in the IAB Charter [BCP39], "Liaisons are kept as informal as
possible and must be of demonstrable value in improving the quality
of IETF specifications". In practice, the IETF prefers liaisons to
take place directly at Working Group level, with formal relationships
and liaison documents in a backup role.
Some of these liaison tasks fall to the IESG, whereas others fall to
the IAB. Detail-oriented readers will learn much about the formal
methods for dealing with other standards bodies in [BCP102], "IAB
Processes for Management of IETF Liaison Relationships", and
[BCP103], "Procedures for Handling Liaison Statements to and from the
IETF". The best place to check to see whether the IETF has any
formal liaison at all is the list of IETF liaisons,
www.ietf.org/liaisonActivities.html. The list shows that there are
many different liaisons to ISO/IEC JTC1 subcommittees.
10.2. Press Coverage of the IETF
Given that the IETF is one of the best-known bodies that is helping
move the Internet forward, it's natural for the computer press (and
even the trade press) to want to cover its actions. In recent years,
a small number of magazines have assigned reporters and editors to
cover the IETF in depth over a long period of time. These reporters
have ample scars from articles that they got wrong, incorrect
statements about the status of Internet Drafts, quotes from people
who are unrelated to the IETF work, and so on.
Major press errors fall into two categories: saying that the IETF is
considering something when in fact there is just an Internet Draft in
a Working Group, and saying that the IETF approved something when all
that happened was that an Informational RFC was published. In both
cases, the press is not fully to blame for the problem, since they
are usually alerted to the story by a company trying to get publicity
for a protocol that they developed or at least support. Of course, a
bit of research by the reporters would probably get them in contact
with someone who could straighten them out, such as a WG chair or an
Area Director. The default press contact for the IETF is the IAD,
who can be reached at mailto:iad@ietf.org.
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RFC 4677 The Tao of IETF September 2006
The fact that those reporters who've gotten it wrong once still come
back to IETF meetings shows that it is possible to get it right
eventually. However, IETF meetings are definitely not for reporters
who are naive about the IETF process (although if you are a reporter
the fact that you are reading this document is a very good sign!).
Furthermore, if you think that you'll get a hot story from attending
an IETF meeting, you are likely to be disappointed.
Considering all this, it's not surprising that some IETFers would
prefer to have the press stay as far away from meetings as possible.
Having a bit of press publicity for protocols that are almost near
completion and will become significant in the industry in the next
year can be a good thing. However, it is the rare reporter who can
resist over-hyping a nascent protocol as the next savior for the
Internet. Such stories do much more harm than good, both for the
readers of the article and for the IETF.
The main reason why a reporter might want to attend an IETF meeting
is not to cover hot technologies (since that can be done in the
comfort of your office by reading the mailing lists) but to meet
people face-to-face. Unfortunately, the most interesting people are
the ones who are also the busiest during the IETF meeting, and some
folks have a tendency to run away when they see a press badge.
However, IETF meetings are excellent places to meet and speak with
document authors and Working Group chairs; this can be quite valuable
for reporters who are covering the progress of protocols.
Reporters who want to find out about "what the IETF is doing" on a
particular topic would be well-advised to talk to more than one
person who is active on that topic in the IETF, and should probably
try to talk to the WG chair in any case. It's impossible to
determine what will happen with a draft by looking at the draft or
talking to the draft's author. Fortunately, all WGs have archives
that a reporter can look through for recent indications about what
the progress of a draft is; unfortunately, few reporters have the
time or inclination to do this kind of research. Because the IETF
doesn't have a press liaison, magazines or newspapers that run a
story with errors won't hear directly from the IETF and therefore
often won't know what they did wrong, so they might easily do it
again later.
11. Security Considerations
Section 8.4.4 explains why each RFC is required to have a Security
Considerations section and gives some idea of what it should and
should not contain. Other than that information, this document does
not touch on Internet security.
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RFC 4677 The Tao of IETF September 2006
Appendix A. Related Information
A.1. Why "the Tao"?
Pronounced "dow", Tao is the basic principle behind the teachings of
Lao-tse, a Chinese master. Its familiar symbol is the black-and-
white yin-yang circle. Taoism conceives the universe as a single
organism, and human beings as interdependent parts of a cosmic whole.
Tao is sometimes translated "the way", but according to Taoist
philosophy the true meaning of the word cannot be expressed in words.
A.2. Useful Email Addresses
Some useful email addresses are listed here. These addresses may
change from time to time, and it's a good idea to check the IETF web
pages for the correct address before sending your mail.
Address Description
-----------------------------------------------------------------
agenda@ietf.org Requests for agenda slots at IETF
meetings
ietf-action@ietf.org Requests for things to be done when you
don't know exactly where to send the
request
ietf-info@ietf.org General questions about the IETF
ietf-registrar@ietf.org Questions about registration, meeting
locations, and fees
ietf-request@ietf.org Requests to join/leave IETF lists
ietf-secretary@ietf.org Questions for the Secretariat
ietf-web@ietf.org Questions or comments about the IETF
web site
internet-drafts@ietf.org Internet Draft submissions and queries
proceedings@ietf.org Where to send Working Group minutes and
slides for the IETF Proceedings
iana@iana.org Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org RFC Editor
Hoffman & Harris Informational [Page 43]RFC 4677 The Tao of IETF September 2006
statements@ietf.org Incoming liaison statements from other
organizations
Online upload pages are planned for the future to facilitate
submission of Internet Drafts, Proceedings, and Liaison statements.
A.3. Useful Documents and Files
The IETF web site, http://www.ietf.org, is the best source for
information about meetings, Working Groups, Internet Drafts, RFCs,
IETF email addresses, and much more. Click on "Additional
Information" to find a variety of helpful links. Internet Drafts and
other documents are also available in the "ietf" directory on
anonymous FTP sites worldwide. For a listing of these sites, see
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
Check the IESG web pages, http://www.ietf.org/iesg.html, to find up-
to-date information about drafts processed, RFCs published, and
documents in Last Call, as well as the monthly IETF status reports.
A.4. Acronyms and Abbreviations Used in the Tao
Some of the acronyms and abbreviations from this document are listed
below.
Term Meaning
-----------------------------------------------------------------
AD Area Director
BCP Best Current Practice
BOF Birds of a Feather
FAQ Frequently Asked Question(s)
FYI For Your Information (RFC)
IAB Internet Architecture Board
IAD IETF Administrative Director
IANA Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
IAOC IETF Administrative Oversight Committee
IASA IETF Administrative Support Activity
ICANN Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers, http://www.icann.org/
I-D Internet Draft
IESG Internet Engineering Steering Group,
http://www.ietf.org/iesg.html
IETF Internet Engineering Task Force,
http://www.ietf.org/
INET Internet Society Conference,
http://www.isoc.org/isoc/conferences/inet/
IPR Intellectual property rights
IRTF Internet Research Task Force, http://www.irtf.org/
Hoffman & Harris Informational [Page 44]RFC 4677 The Tao of IETF September 2006
ISO International Organization for Standardization,
http://www.iso.ch/
ISO-IEC/JTC1 Joint Technical Committee of the International
Organization for Standardization and
International Electrotechnical Commission,
http://www.jtc1.org/
ISOC Internet Society, http://www.isoc.org
ITU International Telecommunication Union,
http://www.itu.int
RFC Request for Comments
STD Standard (RFC)
W3C World Wide Web Consortium, http://www.w3.org/
WG Working Group
Appendix B. IETF Guiding Principles
If you've gotten this far in the Tao, you've learned a lot about how
the IETF works. What you'll find in this appendix summarizes much of
what you've read and adds a few new points to ponder. Be sure to
read through all the principles; taken as a whole, they'll give you a
new slant on what makes the IETF work.
B.1. General
P1. The IETF works by an open process and by rough consensus. This
applies to all aspects of the operation of the IETF, including
creation of IETF documents and decisions on the processes that
are used. But the IETF also observes experiments and running
code with interest, and this should also apply to the
operational processes of the organization.
P2. The IETF works in areas where it has, or can find, technical
competence.
P3. The IETF depends on a volunteer core of active participants.
P4. Membership of the IETF or of its WGs is not fee-based or
organizationally defined, but is based upon self-identification
and active participation by individuals.
B.2. Management and Leadership
P5. The IETF recognizes leadership positions and grants power of
decision to the leaders, but decisions are subject to appeal.
P6. Delegation of power and responsibility are essential to the
effective working of the IETF. As many individuals as possible
will be encouraged to take on leadership of IETF tasks.
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P7. Dissent, complaint, and appeal are a consequence of the IETF's
nature and should be regarded as normal events, but ultimately
it is a fact of life that certain decisions cannot be
effectively appealed.
P8. Leadership positions are for fixed terms (although we have no
formal limitation on the number of terms that may be served).
P9. It is important to develop future leaders within the active
community.
P10. A community process is used to select the leadership.
P11. Leaders are empowered to make the judgment that rough
consensus has been demonstrated. Without formal membership,
there are no formal rules for consensus.
B.3. Process
P12. Although the IETF needs clear and publicly documented process
rules for the normal cases, there should be enough flexibility
to allow unusual cases to be handled according to common sense.
We apply personal judgment and only codify when we're certain.
(But we do codify who can make personal judgments.)
P13. Technical development work should be carried out by tightly
chartered and focused Working Groups.
P14. Parts of the process that have proved impractical should be
removed or made optional.
B.4. Working Groups
P15. Working Groups (WGs) should be primarily responsible for the
quality of their output, and therefore for obtaining early
review; WG chairs as WG leaders, backed up by the IETF
leadership, should act as a quality backstop.
P16. WGs should be primarily responsible for assessing the negative
impact of their work on the Internet as a whole, and therefore
for obtaining cross-area review; the IETF leadership should act
as a cross-area backstop.
P17. Early review of documents is more effective in dealing with
major problems than late review.
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P18. Area Directors (ADs) are responsible for guiding the formation
and chartering of WGs, for giving them direction as necessary,
and for terminating them.
P19. WG chairs are responsible for ensuring that WGs execute their
charters, meet their milestones, and produce deliverables that
are ready for publication.
P20. ADs are responsible for arranging backstop review and final
document approval.
B.5. Documents
P21. IETF documents often start as personal drafts, may become WG
drafts, and are approved for permanent publication by a
leadership body independent of the WG or individuals that
produced them.
P22. IETF documents belong to the community, not to their authors.
But authorship is recognized and valued, as are lesser
contributions than full authorship.
P23. Technical quality and correctness are the primary criteria for
reaching consensus about documents.
P24. IETF specifications may be published as Informational,
Experimental, Standards Track, or Best Current Practice.
P25. IETF Standards Track specifications are not considered to be
satisfactory standards until interoperable independent
implementations have been demonstrated. (This is the
embodiment of the "running code" slogan.) But, on legal
advice, the IETF does not take responsibility for
interoperability tests and does not certify interoperability.
P26. IETF processes are currently published as Best Current Practice
documents.
P27. Useful information that is neither a specification nor a
process may be published as Informational.
P28. Obsolete or deprecated specifications and processes may be
downgraded to Historic.
P29. The standards track should distinguish specifications that have
been demonstrated to interoperate.
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P30. Standards Track and Best Current Practice documents must be
subject to IETF wide rough consensus (Last Call process). WG
rough consensus is normally sufficient for other documents.
P31. Substantive changes made after a document leaves a WG must be
referred back to the WG.
P32. The IETF determines requirements for publication and archiving
of its documents.
Informative References
[BCP9] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996.
[BCP10] Galvin, J., "IAB and IESG Selection, Confirmation, and
Recall Process: Operation of the Nominating and Recall
Committees", BCP 10, RFC 3777, June 2004.
[BCP11] Hovey, R. and S. Bradner, "The Organizations Involved in
the IETF Standards Process", BCP 11, RFC 2028, October
1996.
[BCP14] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[BCP22] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[BCP25] Bradner, S., "IETF Working Group Guidelines and
Procedures", BCP 25, RFC 2418, September 1998.
[BCP26] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an
IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 2434,
October 1998.
[BCP39] Internet Architecture Board and B. Carpenter, "Charter of
the Internet Architecture Board (IAB)", BCP 39, RFC 2850,
May 2000.
[BCP45] Harris, S., "IETF Discussion List Charter", BCP 45, RFC
3005, November 2000.
[BCP72] Rescorla, E. and B. Korver, "Guidelines for Writing RFC
Text on Security Considerations", BCP 72, RFC 3552, July
2003.
Hoffman & Harris Informational [Page 48]RFC 4677 The Tao of IETF September 2006
[BCP78] Bradner, S., "IETF Rights in Contributions", BCP 78, RFC
3978, March 2005.
[BCP79] Bradner, S., "Intellectual Property Rights in IETF
Technology", BCP 79, RFC 3979, March 2005.
[BCP95] Alvestrand, H., "A Mission Statement for the IETF", BCP
95, RFC 3935, October 2004.
[BCP101] Austein, R. and B. Wijnen, "Structure of the IETF
Administrative Support Activity (IASA)", BCP 101, RFC
4071, April 2005.
[BCP102] Daigle, L. and Internet Architecture Board, "IAB Processes
for Management of IETF Liaison Relationships", BCP 102,
RFC 4052, April 2005.
[BCP103] Trowbridge, S., Bradner, S., and F. Baker, "Procedures for
Handling Liaison Statements to and from the IETF", BCP
103, RFC 4053, April 2005.
[RFC1796] Huitema, C., Postel, J., and S. Crocker, "Not All RFCs are
Standards", RFC 1796, April 1995.
[RFC2223] Postel, J. and J. Reynolds, "Instructions to RFC Authors",
RFC 2223, October 1997.
[STD3] Braden, R., "Requirements for Internet Hosts - Application
and Support", STD 3, RFC 1123, October 1989.
Authors' Addresses
Paul Hoffman
VPN Consortium
127 Segre Place
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
US
EMail: paul.hoffman@vpnc.org
Susan Harris
1722 Chandler Road
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
US
EMail: srh@umich.edu
Hoffman & Harris Informational [Page 49]RFC 4677 The Tao of IETF September 2006
Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).
This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions
contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors
retain all their rights.
This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS
OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE
INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Intellectual Property
The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to
pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has
made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information
on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be
found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at
http://www.ietf.org/ipr.
The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at
ietf-ipr@ietf.org.
Acknowledgement
Funding for the RFC Editor function is provided by the IETF
Administrative Support Activity (IASA).
Hoffman & Harris Informational [Page 50]
