Internet Engineering Task Force

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the most important standards committee for communications between host computers by means of data packet transmission networks. There is a large and increasing variety of Internet hosts ranging from sensors to interactive electricity metering equipment, personal computers, workstations, user platforms, large server farms, and supercomputer centres.

Founded in 1986, the historical roots of IETF trace back to the U.S. government–funded ARPANET, developed in the 1960s by the U.S. Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency. The IETF is associated with the Internet Society, an independent nonprofit organization. Membership in the IETF is open to all persons, with no registration fee. The working activities of the IETF are organized in a large number of working groups dedicated to specific areas. IETF meetings take place every year, most often in North America, Europe, and Asia, with participants coming from different fields of interests. Decisions are not based on formal voting but on consensus among the members.

There is an ongoing publication process for the standardization of documents of IETF published in so-called requests for comments (RFCs), which are publicly available for free from the RFC editor. RFCs on the standards track achieve the status of a proposed standard after agreement has been reached within the IETF community. Before 2011, a proposed standard could become a draft standard based on at least two successful implementations. A draft standard could eventually obtain the status of an Internet standard based on further experience and widespread implementation.

In 2011, the organization of the standards track was reformed, reducing the scope of further requirements during the implementation phase and eliminating the category of the draft standard. Since then, the only differentiation is between proposed standard and Internet standard (RFC 6410). On the other hand, RFCs on the nonstandard track also reflect significant working effort by the IETF with informational, experimental, or historic status. By December 23, 2016, the total number of RFCs had reached 8,039.

In this entry, three major topics that reflect the evolution of the IETF since the 1980s are considered: first, universal connectivity of data transmission networks between sender and receiver hosts; second, congestion management within the Internet; and third the emerging requirements of stochastic and deterministic traffic quality guarantees for data packet transmission to enable the Internet of Things.