The Tao of IETF

The Tao of IETF

• 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".
• STDs are RFCs identified as "standards".
• So, 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.
• The IETF is a loosely self-organized group of people who contribute to the engineering and evolution of Internet technologies. It is the principle 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.
• In many ways, the IETF runs on the beliefs of its participants. One of the "founding beliefs" is embodies 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 makes voluntary standards that are often adopted by Internet users, but it does not control, or even patrol, the Internet.
• The vast majority of the IETF's work is done in many working groups.
• A working group is really just a mailing list with a bit of adult supervision. You "join" the working group by subscribing to the mailing list; all mailing lists are open to anyone.
• Another aspect of Working Groups that confounds many people is that 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 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.
• 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 changes, whole sections can be ripped out, new things can be added, and the name can be changed.
• IETF standards exist so that people will use them to write Internet programs that inter-operate.
• 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.
• One way to make it more likely that developers will create inter-operable implementations of standards is to be clear about what's being mandated in a specification.