Participate

The global IETF community works together in many different ways to produce high quality, relevant technical documents that influence the way people design, use, and manage the Internet.

Internet technical standards are built on the combined engineering judgement of IETF participants, including individuals from academia and network operators, router vendors and open source projects. Anyone can contribute to this work. Even if you are experienced with developing, implementing, or deploying Internet technologies, the Getting Started in the IETF guide can help you get up to speed quickly.

  • Working groups

    Working Groups (WGs) are the primary mechanism for development of IETF specifications and guidelines, many of which are intended to be standards or recommendations.

  • Mailing lists

    This page describes many of the IETF mailing lists, where most of the daily work of the IETF is conducted.

  • Internet-Drafts

    Internet-Drafts are working documents of the IETF, its areas, and its Working Groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts.

  • Meetings and events

    While most IETF work takes place online, meetings and other events such as Hackathons provide in-person opportunities to advance work.

  • Hackathons

    An unofficial motto of the IETF is, "We believe in rough consensus and running code." Implementation experience provides critical feedback to the standardization process.

  • Birds of a Feather

    Birds of a Feather sessions (BOFs) are initial discussions about a particular topic of interest to the IETF community. BOFs are usually held at IETF meetings, and requests to hold a BOF must be made significantly in advance of the meeting.