Welcome to the IETF
draft-gondwana-welcome-to-the-ietf-00

Network Working Group                                        B. Gondwana
Internet-Draft                                                  Fastmail
Intended status: Informational                            21 August 2026
Expires: 22 February 2027

                          Welcome to the IETF
                 draft-gondwana-welcome-to-the-ietf-00

Abstract

   The IETF has produced many documents to describe what it is and how
   it works -- this is one of them.

   In an age in which agentic tooling makes it trivially easy to produce
   large amounts of text, this document explains to both humans and
   agents what the IETF is about, how to succeed at the IETF, and some
   common pitfalls which might reduce the quality of your time here.

   This document does not describe the specific arcane process of how
   documents progress through adoption, improvement, consensus, editing,
   and eventual publication.  Instead, we focus on the people and the
   culture of the IETF and how to succeed at IETFing.

Status of This Memo

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   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on 22 February 2027.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2026 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

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   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.  Code Components
   extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
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   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Who even is the IETF? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.2.  Why would you come to the IETF? . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     1.3.  Why wouldn't you come to the IETF?  . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     1.4.  Quality takes time  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     1.5.  Most of the work is not glamorous . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     1.6.  How decisions get made  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     1.7.  The IETF has a culture  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     1.8.  Everything here is on the record  . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     1.9.  A note on agents  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     1.10. Still here?  Good!  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     1.11. Where to begin  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9

1.  Introduction

   This document is aimed at somebody who has not yet engaged with the
   IETF, or is early in their IETF journey.  Welcome!

   By the time you have finished reading this, you should have a clear
   idea of whether the IETF is the right place for you, and whether you
   are likely to add value to the IETF's mission.

   This is a simplified, high level overview.  There are many other
   resources to read to understand more detail, but this will get you
   started.

1.1.  Who even is the IETF?

   The IETF -- the Internet Engineering Task Force -- is the open,
   international organisation that develops the voluntary technical
   standards the Internet is built on.  It works by the consensus of the
   people who turn up to do the work, and everything it produces is
   freely available for anyone to read and implement.

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   The IETF's output is documents called RFCs (Request for Comments).
   There have been over 10,000 of them already.  These documents
   describe how the Internet works, and also how the IETF itself works.
   RFCs have value because they are good, well written, technically
   sound documents.  They are good because of the hard work of people
   like you.

   The IETF's mission is defined in [RFC3935] as "to produce high
   quality, relevant technical and engineering documents that influence
   the way people design, use, and manage the Internet in such a way as
   to make the Internet work better".  Famously, we're not the Internet
   police.  Our documents have so much influence by persuasion and
   demonstrated value.  People trust that if they implement a protocol
   defined in an RFC, it will work reliably and be secure.  Because
   others trust that too, they implement the same RFC, and their systems
   can then interoperate with each other.

   The IETF is also people.  Quite a lot of people.  We meet in person 3
   times per year, about 1000 of us, and there are many more who attend
   remotely or engage with the IETF via email on our mailing lists.

   Almost all of these people are volunteers, giving their own time or
   sponsored by their employers, and applying their judgement and energy
   towards making the Internet better.

   It isn't run entirely by volunteers, though.  The IETF is also
   supported by paid staff and consultants who run the tooling and
   machinery, including professional editors who keep the quality of the
   documents high.

   Most of the IETF's work happens in working groups.  Each one is
   chartered to tackle a specific problem area -- things like routing,
   email, or security -- and in practice a working group is really just
   a mailing list with a couple of chairs to keep it focused and moving.
   When you engage with the IETF, most of the time you're engaging with
   a working group.

   Crucially, there's no membership.  No fees to join, no application to
   fill in, and no gatekeeper who decides whether you belong.  You
   participate by participating.  Almost all of the work happens in the
   open on public mailing lists, and the archives are there for anyone
   to read.  If you're reading this, you're already as entitled to take
   part as anyone else.

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1.2.  Why would you come to the IETF?

   Everybody has their own reasons, but frequently you come because you
   have a problem and you want to change something about how the
   Internet works to solve that problem.  Further, you probably need
   others to make changes to how they do things as well, so you can
   interoperate with them!

   Most people come to the IETF with a goal.  Those who are most
   successful come with a compelling problem that needs solving.  Maybe
   you also have a sketch of a possible solution, but the real value of
   the IETF is the people, and what they bring to your problem: insight,
   hard-won experience, and good taste.

   A lot of that experience is about making good tradeoffs, and the
   hardest tradeoff is almost always compatibility.  The installed base
   of software that already implements the existing specs is large,
   messy, and buggy, and it won't upgrade on your schedule.  Making a
   change that solves your problem without breaking all of that is a
   genuine skill, and it's one the IETF has in depth.  The solution the
   IETF settles on may look very different from your initial idea.

1.3.  Why wouldn't you come to the IETF?

   It costs quite a lot of many people's time to generate an RFC.  Take
   the publicly available figures for what it costs to run the IETF and
   the time participants put in, divide by the number of RFCs produced
   in a year, and you land somewhere around USD $100,000 for an average
   one.  Large, complex documents easily cost into the millions.

   For that level of investment, it wants to be something with a wide
   applicability, that will positively affect the lives of many people,
   and stands a chance of being implemented.

   If you come to the IETF with an idea, one of the first questions is
   going to be "who would use this, and are they interested in it?".  If
   your presentation looks like a marketing blitz and is about why your
   idea is going to be good for you, that won't go over well.  If you
   describe why your idea is good for the Internet, and how it fits in
   without disrupting everything else, that will do better.

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1.4.  Quality takes time

   Collaboration is slower than you might expect, and you're relying on
   other people's time.  Everybody already has plenty of their own ideas
   about what would make the Internet better, so you need to show them
   that you care about their priorities too -- and that you have sound
   technical judgement.  If you are generous with your time, reviewing
   and assisting others, they will repay you in kind.

   The average RFC takes over 3 years from beginning to end.  Drafts
   whose proponent disappears before they are finished are a lot less
   likely to complete the journey.  Somebody has to care about the
   problem enough to keep it moving, and if you brought the idea to the
   IETF in the first place, that somebody is probably you.

   The oldest RFC is more than 50 years old now.  These documents are
   the foundation of the Internet.  Foundations take a long time to
   build, but they also last a long time.

1.5.  Most of the work is not glamorous

   It's great to get your name on an RFC.  Having a published RFC is
   very valuable to people's careers.

   Not every RFC is a headline protocol with its own name and press
   release.  Most are the careful, slow, painstaking work of defining
   the edge cases and error handling that make everything reliable in a
   chaotic world.

   But many people are addicted to this organisation!  The IETF is full
   of people who really care about doing good work.  If you bring that
   energy, you will be very much welcomed.  Many people change jobs, and
   continue coming to the IETF.  As they become more senior,
   participation at the IETF becomes a non-optional part of their
   contract negotiations.  You'll get to work with smart, like-minded
   people and make lifelong friends -- relationships that last even
   longer than it takes to realise the mistakes you made in your first
   RFC and go back and replace it with a newer one.

1.6.  How decisions get made

   The IETF doesn't vote.  Participants speak for themselves as
   individuals, not on behalf of their employers, so counting hands
   would be close to meaningless -- it would just reward whoever dragged
   the most colleagues along to the room.

   The way the IETF describes itself is "rough consensus and running
   code".  Both halves matter.

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   Rough consensus is how we decide.  A chair listens to the discussion
   and judges where the group has landed.  A proposal moves ahead once
   the objections have been heard, understood, and either dealt with or
   shown to be wrong.  An objection with real technical merit behind it
   has to be engaged with; you can't paper over it by being more
   numerous.  In a meeting you'll sometimes hear a chair ask the room to
   hum.  It's a deliberately fuzzy way to gauge the mood, and it works
   well enough.

   Running code is the other half.  We have a deep respect for things
   that actually work.  Show two independent implementations talking to
   each other and you've made an argument that's very hard to beat with
   words alone.  That's a big part of why we run a Hackathon at every
   meeting.

   So the currency here is persuasion and demonstration.  Nobody gets to
   pull rank.

1.7.  The IETF has a culture

   This organisation has existed for decades.  It produces a ton of
   highly influential documents.  It's not perfect, but it is very
   successful.  It does have a reputation of being hard to get started
   in, some of which is legitimately earned and some of which is people
   wanting it to be something it isn't.

   To be involved in the IETF, you need to fit in with the culture that
   makes it work.  Take the time to observe and understand, see what
   works and what doesn't.  Some people at the IETF you will admire and
   be impressed at their ideas and behaviours.  Some you will observe
   and think "I wouldn't take that approach".  Be unafraid to help
   improve things, while humble enough to realise there might be value
   you have not yet understood in how things are currently done.

1.8.  Everything here is on the record

   The flip side of all that openness is that everything you say is
   public and kept forever.  Posts to the mailing lists, comments at the
   microphone, the drafts you submit -- all of it is archived and
   searchable, and it isn't going away.  Write accordingly.

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   Two things are worth knowing before you contribute.  The first is the
   "Note Well": by taking part you agree that your contributions can be
   published and freely used, and you take on an obligation to disclose
   patents you know about that would be needed to implement what's being
   discussed.  That's a simplified summary -- the actual Note Well text,
   and the policies it points to, are what bind you.  You'll see it
   referenced at the start of every meeting and on every mailing list.
   Read it once so it doesn't surprise you later.

   The second is that the IETF has a code of conduct and an anti-
   harassment policy, and they're taken seriously.  Argue hard about the
   technical questions -- that's the whole point of being here -- while
   treating the people on the other side of the argument well.  Attack
   the argument and leave the person alone.  Behave well and you'll
   never need to become intimately familiar with the penalties in the
   code of conduct, the Ombudsteam, or the list moderators.

1.9.  A note on agents

   It has never been easier to produce a plausible-looking draft.  An
   LLM will happily generate a hundred pages of correctly-formatted
   protocol text overnight, full of confident RFC 2119 keywords.

   Writing the text was never the hard part.  The hard part is caring
   about a problem for three years, showing up to defend the work,
   reading other people's drafts as carefully as you'd want yours read,
   getting two implementations to actually interoperate, and persuading
   a room full of sceptical experts that your idea earns its place in
   the Internet.  Those are the things that turn an idea into a
   standard, and a tool can't do them for you.

   Use whatever helps you think and write more clearly.  But remember
   that every draft costs other people their time to read.  If you send
   text that no human has read, understood, and is willing to stand
   behind, you're spending expensive volunteer attention to do the work
   you skipped -- and people here can tell.  Own what you submit.

   The norms around all this are still being worked out, but some
   guidance already exists.  The IRTF's code of conduct ([RFC9775]) says
   a generative tool must not be listed as an author of a document, and
   that significant amounts of AI-generated content must be disclosed.
   Whichever tools you use, the accountability stays with you.

1.10.  Still here?  Good!

   Bring problems, then help iterate towards solutions.  If this sounds
   like something you want to do, then the IETF wants you.

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   Once your idea has been adopted by the IETF, it becomes the IETF's
   idea.  You have as much say, and also as little say, as everybody
   else in the eventual outcome.  Your influence will be proportional to
   the quality of your ideas, and your ability to persuade.

   Persuasion happens both in person, and online - so hone your ability
   to communicate well in both settings, and build relationships such
   that when you need something from some other volunteer, they will be
   inclined to make the effort.

   Clear writing is a big part of this.  The easier your ideas are to
   read, and the more carefully you choose your terminology, the more
   persuasive you'll be -- and the less of everyone's time you'll spend
   untangling what you actually meant.

1.11.  Where to begin

   If you've read this far and you're keen, the on-ramp is smaller than
   the IETF's reputation suggests.  Find the working group whose problem
   space is closest to yours, subscribe to its mailing list, and read
   for a while to get a feel for how the group talks and what it cares
   about.  Read the drafts it's working on.  Come to a meeting, in
   person or online, and introduce yourself.

   Introduce yourself to the working group chairs, or the area directors
   responsible for the area you care about, and ask them how you can
   help.  Offering to review a document or take on a small piece of work
   is one of the fastest ways to become known and trusted -- the kind of
   generosity that gets repaid later.

   You don't have to do this alone.  The IETF runs sessions for new
   participants at every meeting, and there's a mentoring programme that
   will pair you with someone experienced.  Plenty of people are happy
   to be asked a "dumb" question; most of us were new once, and someone
   helped us.  The official guides at https://www.ietf.org/about/
   (https://www.ietf.org/about/) go into the practical detail this
   document deliberately skips.

2.  Informative References

   [RFC3935]  Alvestrand, H., "A Mission Statement for the IETF",
              BCP 95, RFC 3935, DOI 10.17487/RFC3935, October 2004,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3935>.

   [RFC9775]  Perkins, C. S., "IRTF Code of Conduct", RFC 9775,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9775, March 2025,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9775>.

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Author's Address

   Bron Gondwana
   Fastmail
   Email: brong@fastmailteam.com

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