IETF success stories

The IETF creates specifications that improve the experience of Internet users around the world and provide additional capabilities for organizations who build—and build on—Internet technologies.

L4S: A faster-feeling Internet, shipping now

L4S (Low Latency, Low Loss, Scalable Throughput) is a standard developed in the IETF and published as RFCs 9330-9332 in January 2023 to address a pervasive decades-long performance bottleneck that Internet users experience — affecting video calls, cloud gaming, and other real-time applications.

By the end of 2025, more than 10 million Internet users were on L4S-capable access networks, with rapid growth expected to continue through 2026 and 2027. L4S is available in products and services at every layer of the Internet technology stack today: from operating systems to fixed and mobile Internet services, to online gaming, and video conferencing applications.

JMAP: A modern unified Internet inbox, designed to work for today

JMAP (the JSON Meta Application Protocol) is a standard developed in the IETF and published as RFCs 8620 and 8621 to replace the aging IMAP protocol with a more efficient, developer-friendly way to synchronize email, calendars, and contacts between a client and a server.

As of 2025, JMAP is used in production by several mail services and servers, including Fastmail, Cyrus IMAP, Apache James, and Stalwart Mail Server, with Thunderbird now rolling out JMAP support — first on iOS, with desktop support planned. JMAP is also expanding beyond email: Mailtemi is building JMAP support for calendars, contacts, and file storage, and OpenCloud is applying it to collaboration tools.

MLS: Providing groups better and more efficient security at Internet scale

MLS provides unsurpassed security and privacy for users of group communications applications. Using MLS, participants always know which other members of a group will receive the messages they send, and the validity of new participants joining a group is verified by all the other participants. During its development in the IETF, MLS underwent formal security analysis and industry review. It currently supports multiple ciphersuites, and makes it straightforward to add quantum attack resistant ciphersuites in the future. 

The open processes and “running code” that are hallmarks of the IETF, mean that MLS is already proven to be efficient at Internet scale, working efficiently with groups that have thousands of participants. MLS is either already available from — or soon will be implemented and deployed by — a wide range of companies and organizations, including:

  • AWS
  • Cisco
  • Cloudflare
  • Google
  • The Matrix.org Foundation
  • Meta
  • Mozilla
  • Phoenix R&D
  • Wire

TLS 1.3: Updating the most important security protocol on the Internet

TLS 1.3 delivers superior privacy, security, and performance compared to the previous version, and there was more TLS 1.3 use in the first five months after RFC 8446 was published than in the first five years after the last version of TLS was published as an RFC. And that growth has continued, including web browsers, mobile operating systems, embedded devices and, more generally, TLS implementations. 

The process of developing TLS 1.3 included significant work on “running code”, a core mantra of the IETF. This meant building and testing implementations by many companies and organizations that provide products and services widely used on the Internet, such as web browsers and content distribution networks.