Verified
The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) is the organization primarily tasked with producing the protocol standards for the Internet. It is an organization fraught with contradictions both real and imagined. First, Internet Standards are published in documents called RFCs or Request for Comments. (In the original ARPANet, RFCs were Requests for Comments and if one reads the early numbers (approx those under 500) that is what one mostly sees.) They are now the standards documents. So one finds that RFCs are not truly RFCs; they are, in fact, the last word. Other documents are called Internet-Drafts. From the name one would have the impression that this is a document being processed to become an Internet standard. No, it is really a term used to designate any contribution to the discussion. So in fact, an Internet Draft is a Request for Comment, not a draft RFC. Whi le an RFC not yet acted on by the IESG is a draft Internet Standard. Confused yet?
RFCs are created by "rough consensus" and running code. For a specification to be considered an RFC there must be a "rough consensus" among the group developing the work and at least two interoperating implementations by separate groups. Arriving at a rough consensus is a bit nebulous since there is no membership. Anyone who shows up for a discussion either at a meeting or on a mailing list can express an opinion. (There is no balloting.) "Rough consensus" is generally not made at IETF meetings but on the mailing lists. Sessions at IETF meetings tend to have hundreds of attendees and consequently discussion in a 2 hour session is generally limited to tutorial-like discussions on the state of the work with a small minority able to actually express an opinion. For major issues, people are able to express positions, discussion and debate as found in most standards committees is simply not possible. Most of the discussion are carried out on the mailing lists, rather than face-to-face. There is nothing to prevent an organization from stuffing either a meeting or the email discussion. Unlike most standards meetings, the goal of an IETF meeting is not to progress the work by creating a new working draft, etc. This structure is highly susceptible to being gamed and the output of a group being determined by a small number of people.
This has lead to a current crisis in the IETF questioning the effectiveness of its organization. This is not helped by the fact that none of the major Internet protocols, such as IP, TCP, Telnet, SMTP, FTP, BGP, the Web, were produced by the IETF. Probably the four most well-known protocols the IETF has produced are DHCP, for automatically assigning addresses; OSPF, a routing protocol that for a long time was considered unstable; SNMP, which has not met expectations, and IPv6 which has been riddled by controversy, slow adoption and is a major contributor to the crisis in router table size.
The work in the IETF is divided into eight areas:
- Applications Area
- General Area
- Internet Area (Network Layer except Routing)
- Operations and Management Area
- Real-time Applications and Infrastructure Area (VoIP)
- Routing area
- Security Area
- Transport Area
Within these areas there may several task groups working on specific projects. The output of these task groups is forwarded to the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). In other standards organizations as we discussed in Chapter 1, the approval process is bicameral with technical expertise that may only be available for specific projects feeding into a management level with a longer term view. In both groups, the major stakeholders are represented. (In ANSI for example, there are guidelines to ensure that users, vendors and academics are represented.) Think of task groups as the House of Representatives and the next level as the Senate. This is viewed as critical in providing sufficient checks and balances to guarantee due process.
In the IETF, the IESG is a relatively small group consisting of the Area Directors usually two per area, the IETF and IESG Chairs and 5 members-at-large: less than 20 people from a working population of close to 3000. This is a very different structure: More of a politburo than a Senate. Draft RFCs passed by the task groups are reviewed by the IESG before going on to become RFCs. Drafts have been known to be held up here for months or even years, not always for apparentreasons.
The amorphous nature of the IETF organization makes it hard to gauge and hard to work in. But then, this makes it easier for organizations with extensive resources (and long histories) to manipulate and makes such manipulation hard to see or prove. The IETF sees itself as a paragon of participatory democracy with many completely oblivious to the political realities. Needless to say, it is unlikely that the organization will be changed in any significant way. There are too many people who benefit from the current structure. The IETF is a highly political organization where it may hard for a newcomer to determine the political agendas.