Editing Internet Engineering Task Force (section)

==Operations==
The details of IETF operations have changed considerably as the organization has grown, but the basic mechanism remains publication of proposed specifications, development based on the proposals, review and independent testing by participants, and republication as a revised proposal, a draft proposal, or eventually as an Internet Standard. IETF standards are developed in an open, all-inclusive process in which any interested individual can participate. All IETF documents are freely available over the Internet and can be reproduced at will. Multiple, working, useful, interoperable implementations are the chief requirement before an IETF proposed specification can become a standard.<ref name=Bradner-January1999/> Most specifications are focused on single protocols rather than tightly interlocked systems. This has allowed the protocols to be used in many different systems, and its standards are routinely re-used by bodies which create full-fledged architectures (e.g. [[3GPP]] [[IP Multimedia Subsystem|IMS]]).{{citation needed|date=January 2021}}

Because it relies on volunteers and uses "rough consensus and running code" as its touchstone, results can be slow whenever the number of volunteers is either too small to make progress, or so large as to make consensus difficult, or when volunteers lack the necessary expertise. For protocols like [[SMTP]], which is used to transport e-mail for a user community in the many hundreds of millions, there is also considerable resistance to any change that is not fully [[backward compatible]], except for [[IPv6]]. Work within the IETF on ways to improve the speed of the standards-making process is ongoing but, because the number of volunteers with opinions on it is very great, consensus on improvements has been slow to develop.{{citation needed|date=January 2021}}

The IETF cooperates with the [[World Wide Web Consortium|W3C]], [[International Organization for Standardization|ISO]]/[[International Electrotechnical Commission|IEC]], [[International Telecommunication Union|ITU]], and other standards bodies.<ref name=IETFandInternetSociety/>

Statistics are available that show who the top contributors by RFC publication are.<ref>[http://www.arkko.com/tools/allstats/ "IETF document statistics (all documents)"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130706043018/http://www.arkko.com/tools/allstats/ |date=July 6, 2013 }}, Jari Arkko. Retrieved 21 July 2014.</ref> While the IETF only allows for participation by individuals, and not by corporations or governments, sponsorship information is available from these statistics.{{citation needed|date=January 2021}}