Az Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is an open standards organization that has no formal membership requirements. All participants and managers are volunteers and their work is funded by sponsors. The organization develops and supports Internet standards, primarily the standards that make up the Internet Protocol Package (TCP / IP). It also deals with the regulation of these standards through RFCs and is the top-level oversight body on the Internet.

The IETF started as an activity supported by the US Federal Government, but it has been since 1993 Internet Society, is engaged in standard development activities under the auspices of a non-profit organization based on international membership.

The IETF is organized into a number of working groups and informal discussion forums (BoFs, or Feather of Birds), each of which deals with a specific topic and contributes to the way bottom-up tasks are created, which are led by these working groups. Each working group has an appointed chairman (or sometimes several co-chairs) and a statute that describes the topic of the group and what standards will be established when. The group is open to anyone who wants to join for a fee.

Consensus is the primary basis for decision-making. There is no formal voting procedure. Since most IETF work is done through mailing lists, there is no need for participants to participate. The purpose of each working group is to finish the work on the topic and then dissolve the group.