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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 IETF is overseen by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), which is in turn responsible to the Internet Society (ISOC).
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.
List of IETF chairs
- Harald Tveit Alvestrand (as of 2001)
- Fred Baker (1996-2001)
- Paul Mockapetris (1994-1995)
- Phill Gross (1986-1993)
- Mike Corrigan (1986)
Related topics
External links and references
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