The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is charged with developing and promoting Internet standards. It is an open, all-volunteer organization, with no formal membership nor membership requirements.
It is organized into a large number of working groups, each dealing with a specific topic; each working group has an appointed chair (or sometimes several co-chairs). The working groups are organized into areas by subject matter; each area is overseen by an area director (AD) (most areas have 2 co-AD's); the ADs appoint working group chairs. The area directors, together with the IETF Chair, form the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), which is responsible for the overall operation of the IETF.
The current chairman of the IETF is Harald Tveit Alvestrand. Since 2003 he has been overseeing modest reforms of IETF processes and procedures, in response to the widespread consensus that IETF has outgrown the days when the Internet was still a small research project.
The most notorious, well-publicized, and well-documented example of IETF's growing problems was when Tim Berners-Lee became director of the World Wide Web Consortium in order to personally lead the development of Web standards. When the Internet suddenly became the world's next great communications medium in 1993, everyone wanted to join IETF and play a part in its future development. Berners-Lee grew sick and tired of sitting through too many IETF meetings where everyone wanted to express an opinion about the future of his creation and nothing was done.
The IETF is overseen by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), which oversees its external relationships, and relations with the RFC Editor.
The IETF has at times been ascribed nearly magical abilities by the trade press, who assumed its mechanisms were responsible for the success of the Internet because it works on the Internet's core protocols.
Work within the IETF on ways to improve its speed is ongoing but, because the number of volunteers with opinions on it is very great, consensus mechanisms on how to improve have been slow to emerge.
IETF working groups have defined the security standards that will help secure the Internet, the quality of service standards that will make the Internet a more predictable environment, and the standard for the next generation of the Internet protocol itself.
The IETF has grown quite a bit since then, with more than 500 attendees at the 23rd meeting in March 1992, more than 750 attendees at the 29th meeting in March 1994, more than 1,000 attendees at the 31st meeting in December 1994, and almost 2,000 attendees at the 37th meeting in December 1996.
The IETF motto is "rough consensus and running code." Working group unanimity is not required for a proposal to be adopted, but a proposal that cannot demonstrate that most of the working group members think that it is the right thing to do will not be approved.
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