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Internet standards

The IETF is the premier Internet standards organization. It follows open and well-documented processes for setting these standards. Once published, those standards are made freely available.

Improving existing standards and creating, implementing, and deploying new standards is an ongoing effort. The IETF's mission is to produce high quality, relevant technical documents that describe these voluntary standards. IETF working groups are the primary mechanism for development of IETF specifications and guidelines.

  • RFCs

    RFC documents contain technical specifications and organizational notes for the Internet.

  • Intellectual Property Rights and the IETF

    All IETF standards are freely available to view and read, and generally free to implement by anyone without permission or payment.

  • Standards process

    The process of creating a standard is straightforward: a specification undergoes a period of development and several iterations of review by the Internet community and revision based upon experience.

  • Publishing and accessing RFCs

    Internet-Drafts that have successfully completed the IETF review process are submitted to the RFC Editor for publication.

  • Protocol registries (IANA)

    The global coordination of the DNS Root, IP addressing, and other Internet protocol resources is performed as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions.