Who’s watching your network The IETF standards process and OpenPGP Jon Callas 8 October 1998

Who’s watching your network The IETF Internet Engineering Task Force An International community of people concerned with the evolution of Internet Standards Made of Working Groups – Each WG has a chartered scope – Official work done on mailing lists – Three meetings per year

Who’s watching your network The IETF Working groups in Areas – General, Internet, Applications, Operations and Management, Security, Routing, Transport, User Services Each Area has an Area Director ADs form the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG)

Who’s watching your network The IETF Areas are overseen by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) IAB and IESG are chartered by The Internet Society (ISOC) ISOC is a non-profit professional society Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) assigns constants, parameters, etc. Internet Research Task Force (IRTF)

Who’s watching your network The Tao of the IETF The IETF is a controlled anarchy There is no membership – If you are on a WG mailing list, or attend a meeting, or contribute in any way, you’re as close to a member as there is. – IETF contributions come from people, not corporations

Who’s watching your network BOFs Birds of a Feather Sessions – Essentially proto-working groups – Can meet only twice, and then never again – Closely related concept -- The Bar BOF

Who’s watching your network RFC Request For Comments – Essentially IETF standards Many are pseudo-standards Pseudo-standards are nonetheless important – Drafts of RFCs are called Internet Drafts Have a life of 6 months – RFC 2223, Instructions to Authors, tells how to write an RFC

Who’s watching your network RFC Informational – Anyone can create one, no review required – IETF pseudo-standards – Many are reprints of other documents – Tradition of April Fools RFCs Many of these are only half jokes

Who’s watching your network RFC Standards Track – Created by Working Groups – Detailed Process for Approval Proposed Standard, Draft Standard, Standard – Standards get an STD number, which is a handle

Who’s watching your network RFC FYI – Have their own FYI numbers, like STDs Best Practices Experimental

Who’s watching your network Other considerations Intellectual Property Considerations – Patented technologies are forbidden from being MUSTs unless there is an alternative – Munich doctrine as applied to crypto – Patents have caused much havoc in the Security area

Who’s watching your network Writing an RFC Read RFC2223, 2119, STD1 Arcane format – I use Tim Dierk’s Perl program to format Find a working group to support you, or go informational Or start your own WG

Who’s watching your network OpenPGP Standards Track Working Group Has two main goals – OpenPGP formats -- PGP message and certificate formats – OpenPGP/MIME -- MIME security encoding of multipart messages

Who’s watching your network OpenPGP OpenPGP formats – Replaces informational RFC1991 – In IETF last call for Proposed Standard OpenPGP/MIME – Finishing up replacement for RFC2015

Who’s watching your network