Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) manages the standards process that defines the TCP/IP protocol stack and, indeed, most of the protocols on the Internet.

The standardization process of the IETF is called Request for Comment (RFC). RFCs are numbered in order of submission for consideration. They progress through the approval process is order of:

• Proposed Standard
• Draft Standard
• Internet Standard
• Historical Standard

Historical Standards are deprecated and superseded by more current standards.

References:

IETF website: http://www.ietf.org/

RFC database: http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc.html