If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body... - The Internet Engineering Task Force
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The IETF is a collaboration of working groups very similar in intent to the W3C; they are an open community of developers and IT professionals and enthusiasts seeking to improve the performance and stability of the Internet.
They are a loosely self-organized group of people that make technical and engineering contributions to the Internet and associated technologies.
The IETF aims include:
- Identifying operational and technical problems of the Internet and proposing solutions to these problems
- Specifying the development or usage of protocols
- Making recommendations to the IESG regarding the standardization of protocols and protocol usage in the Internet
- Facilitating technology transfer from the IRTF to the wider Internet community
- Providing a forum for the exchange of information within the Internet community between vendors, users, researchers, agency contractors, and network managers.
There is no membership for the IETF. Anyone can attend one of their tri-annual meetings, and many people from all corners of the industry do. The IETF is divided into several areas, such as the applications area, which focuses on applications that benefit end users; the Internet area, which focuses primarily on the IP protocol; and the transport area, which deals with TCP implementation, among other things. There are other areas, and each of the areas is split up into approximately 10 to 12 working groups. Each of the working groups has one or two chairs and each of the areas have a maximum of two directors. It is these IETF directors and chairs that make up the IESG.
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