Trying to Keep the Internet’s Standards Setting Process in Perspective

Kai Jakobs, Aachen University Computer Science Department, Informatik IV

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 2000)

The Internet is emerging as a crucial part of the Global Information Infrastructure. This is not least due to the remarkable longevity and versatility of some of its protocols. Accordingly, many claim that the standards setting process adopted by the Internet community is vastly superior to those of the more 'traditional' standards setting bodies, such as ISO and ITU. An adequate standards setting process would indeed be most desirable to ensure the Internet's future usefulness. Yet, in the light of the massive financial interests that are at stake here, this paper voices some concerns A brief general description of the process adopted by the IETF is followed by a discussion of some of the more noteworthy characteristics of this process. This discussion, related observations and the subsequent conclusions are largely based on interviews with long-standing IETF 'members'.