RFC1310: The Internet Standards Process
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RFC1602
Network Working Group Internet Activities Board
Request for Comments: 1310 Lyman Chapin, Chair
March 1992
The Internet Standards Process
Status of this Memo
This informational memo presents the current procedures for creating
and documenting Internet Standards. Distribution of this memo is
unlimited.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION ................................................. 2
1.1. Internet Standards ....................................... 2
1.2. Organization ............................................. 3
2. THE INTERNET STANDARDS PROCESS ............................... 4
2.1. Introduction ............................................. 4
2.2. The Internet Standards Track ............................. 5
2.3. Requests for Comments (RFCs) ............................. 5
2.4. Internet Drafts .......................................... 6
2.5. Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA) ................ 7
2.6. Review and Approval ...................................... 8
2.7. Entering the Standards Track ............................. 9
2.8. Advancing in the Standards Track ......................... 9
2.9. Revising a Standard ...................................... 10
3. NOMENCLATURE ................................................. 10
3.1 Types of Specifications .................................. 10
3.2 Standards Track Maturity Levels .......................... 12
3.3 Non-Standards Track Maturity Levels ...................... 13
3.4 Requirement Levels ....................................... 14
4. EXTERNAL STANDARDS AND SPECIFICATIONS ........................ 15
5. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS ................................. 17
6. PATENT POLICY ................................................ 17
6.1 Statement from Patent Holder ............................. 18
6.2 Record of Statement ...................................... 18
6.3 Notice ................................................... 18
6.4 Identifying Patents ...................................... 19
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND REFERENCES ............................... 19
APPENDIX A: GLOSSARY ............................................. 20
APPENDIX B: UNRESOLVED ISSUES .................................... 21
Security Considerations .......................................... 23
Author's Address ................................................. 23
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1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Internet Standards
This memo documents the process currently used for the
standardization of Internet protocols and procedures.
The Internet, a loosely-organized international collaboration of
autonomous, interconnected networks, supports host-to-host
communication through voluntary adherence to open protocols and
procedures defined by Internet Standards. There are also many
isolated internets, i.e., sets of interconnected networks, that
are not connected to the Internet but use the Internet Standards.
The architecture and technical specifications of the Internet are
the result of numerous research and development activities
conducted over a period of two decades, performed by the network
R&D community, by service and equipment vendors, and by government
agencies around the world.
In general, an Internet Standard is a specification that is stable
and well-understood, is technically competent, has multiple,
independent, and interoperable implementations with operational
experience, enjoys significant public support, and is recognizably
useful in some or all parts of the Internet.
The principal set of Internet Standards is commonly known as the
"TCP/IP protocol suite". As the Internet evolves, new protocols
and services, in particular those for Open Systems Interconnection
(OSI), have been and will be deployed in traditional TCP/IP
environments, leading to an Internet that supports multiple
protocol suites. This document concerns all protocols,
procedures, and conventions used in the Internet, not just the
TCP/IP protocols.
In outline, the process of creating an Internet Standard is
straightforward: a specification undergoes a period of development
and several iterations of review by the Internet community and
perhaps revision based upon experience, is adopted as a Standard
by the appropriate body (see below), and is published.
In practice, the process is somewhat more complicated, due to (1)
the number and type of possible sources for specifications; (2)
the need to prepare and revise a specification in a manner that
preserves the interests of all of the affected parties; (3) the
importance of establishing widespread community agreement on its
technical content; and (4) the difficulty of evaluating the
utility of a particular specification for the Internet community.
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Some specifications that are candidates for Internet
standardization are the result of organized efforts directly
within the Internet community; others are the result of work that
was not originally organized as an Internet effort, but which was
later adopted by the Internet community.
From its inception, the Internet has been, and is expected to
remain, an evolving system whose participants regularly factor new
requirements and technology into the design and implementation of
the global Internet. Users of the Internet and providers of the
equipment, software, and services that support it should
anticipate and embrace this adaptability as a major tenet of
Internet philosophy.
The procedures described in this document are the result of three
years of evolution, driven both by the needs of the growing and
increasingly diverse Internet community, and by experience.
Comments and suggestions are invited for improvement in these
procedures.
1.2 Organization
The Internet Activities Board (IAB) is the primary coordinating
committee for Internet design, engineering, and management [1].
The IAB has delegated to its Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF) the primary responsibility for the development and review
of potential Internet Standards from all sources. The IETF forms
Working Groups to pursue specific technical issues, frequently
resulting in the development of one or more specifications that
are proposed for adoption as Internet Standards.
Final decisions on Internet standardization are made by the IAB,
based upon recommendations from the Internet Engineering Steering
Group (IESG), the leadership body of the IETF. IETF Working
Groups are organized into areas, and each area is coordinated by
an Area Director. The Area Directors and the IETF Chairman are
included in the IESG.
Any member of the Internet community with the time and interest is
urged to attend IETF meetings and to participate actively in one
or more IETF Working Groups. Participation is by individual
technical contributors, rather than formal representatives of
organizations. The process works because the IETF Working Groups
display a spirit of cooperation as well as a high degree of
technical maturity; most IETF members agree that the greatest
benefit for all members of the Internet community results from
cooperative development of technically superior protocols and
services.
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A second body under the IAB, the Internet Research Task Force
(IRTF), investigates topics considered to be too uncertain, too
advanced, or insufficiently well-understood to be the subject of
Internet standardization. When an IRTF activity generates a
specification that is sufficiently stable to be considered for
Internet standardization, it is processed through the IETF.
Section 2 of this document describes the process and rules for
Internet standardization. Section 3 presents the nomenclature for
different kinds and levels of Internet standard technical
specifications and their applicability. Section 4 defines how
relevant externally-sponsored specifications and practices that
are developed and controlled by other bodies or by vendors are
handled in the Internet standardization process. Section 5
presents the requirement for prior disclosure of the existence of
intellectual property rights. Section 6 describes the rules for
Internet Standards that involve patents.
2. THE INTERNET STANDARDS PROCESS
2.1. Introduction
The procedures described in this document are intended to provide
a clear, open, and objective basis for developing, evaluating, and
adopting Internet Standards for protocols and services. The
procedures provide ample opportunity for participation and comment
by all interested parties. Before an Internet Standard is
adopted, it is repeatedly discussed (and perhaps debated) in open
open meetings and/or public electronic mailing lists, and it is
available for review via world-wide on-line directories.
These procedures are explicitly aimed at developing and adopting
generally-accepted practices. Thus, a candidate for Internet
standardization is implemented and tested for correct operation
and interoperability by multiple, independent parties, and
utilized in increasingly demanding environments, before it can be
adopted as an Internet Standard.
The procedures that are described here provide a great deal of
flexibility to adapt to the wide variety of circumstances that
occur in the Internet standardization process. Experience has
shown this flexibility to be vital in achieving the following
goals for Internet standardization:
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* high quality,
* prior implementation and testing,
* openness and fairness, and
* timeliness.
2.2. The Internet Standards Track
Specifications that are destined to become Internet Standards
evolve through a set of maturity levels known as the "standards
track". These maturity levels -- "Proposed Standard", "Draft
Standard", and "Standard" -- are defined and discussed below in
Section 3.2.
Even after a specification has been adopted as an Internet
Standard, further evolution often occurs based on experience and
the recognition of new requirements. The nomenclature and
procedures of Internet standardization provide for the replacement
of old Internet Standards with new ones, and the assignment of
descriptive labels to indicate the status of "retired" Internet
Standards. A set of maturity levels is defined in Section 3.3 to
cover these and other "off-track" specifications.
2.3. Requests for Comments (RFCs)
Each distinct version of a specification is published as part of
the "Request for Comments" (RFC) document series.
RFCs form a series of publications of networking technical
documents, begun in 1969 as part of the original DARPA wide-area
networking (ARPANET) project (see Appendix A for glossary of
acronyms). RFCs cover a wide range of topics, from early
discussion of new research concepts to status memos about the
Internet. The IAB views the RFC publication process to be
sufficiently important to warrant including the RFC Editor in the
IAB membership.
The status of specifications on the Internet standards track is
summarized periodically in a summary RFC entitled "IAB Official
Protocol Standards" [2]. This RFC shows the level of maturity and
other helpful information for each Internet protocol or service
specification.
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********************************************************
* The "IAB Official Protocol Standards" RFC is the *
* authoritative statement of the status of any *
* particular Internet specification, *
********************************************************
and it is the "Publication of Record" with respect to Internet
standardization.
The STD documents form a subseries of the RFC series. When a
specification has been adopted as a Standard, its RFC is labeled
with a STDxxx number [9] in addition to its RFC number.
Not all specifications of protocols or services for the Internet
should or will become Internet Standards. Such non-standards
track specifications are not subject to the rules for Internet
standardization; generally, they will be published directly as
RFCs at the discretion of the RFC editor. These RFCs will be
marked as "Experimental" or "Informational" (see section 3.3).
********************************************************
* It is important to remember that not all RFCs *
* are standards track documents, and that not all *
* standards track documents reach the level of *
* Standard. *
********************************************************
2.4. Internet Drafts
During the development of a specification, draft versions of the
document are made available for informal review and comment by
placing them in the IETF's "Internet Drafts" directory, which is
replicated on a number of Internet hosts. This makes an evolving
working document readily available to a wide audience,
facilitating the process of review and revision.
After completion to the satisfaction of its author and the
cognizant Working Group, a document that is expected to enter or
advance in the Internet standardization process shall be made
available as an Internet Draft. It shall remain as an Internet
Draft for a period of time that permits useful community review,
at least two weeks, before submission to the IESG.
An Internet Draft that is published as an RFC is removed from the
Internet Draft directory. A document that has remained unchanged
in the Internet Drafts directory for more than six months without
being recommended by the IESG for publication as an RFC is simply
removed from the Internet Draft directory. At any time, an
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Internet Draft may be replace by a more recent version of the same
specification, restarting the six-month timeout period.
An Internet Draft is NOT a means of "publishing" a specification;
specifications are published through the RFC mechanism described
in the next section. Internet Drafts have no formal status, and
are not part of the permanent archival record of Internet
activity, and they are subject to change or removal at any time.
Under no circumstances should an Internet Draft be referenced by
any paper, report, or Request for Proposal.
2.5. Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA)
Many protocol specifications include numbers, keywords, and other
parameters that must be uniquely assigned. Examples include
version numbers, protocol numbers, port numbers, and MIB numbers.
The IAB has delegated to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
(IANA) the task of assigning such protocol parameters for the
Internet. The IANA publishes tables of all currently assigned
numbers and parameters in RFCs titled "Assigned Numbers" [8].
Each category of assigned numbers typically arises from some
protocol that is on the standards track or is an Internet
Standard. For example, TCP port numbers are assigned because TCP
is a Standard. A particular value within a category may be
assigned in a variety of circumstances; the specification
requiring the parameter may be in the standards track, it may be
Experimental, or it may be private.
Chaos could result from accidental conflicts of parameter values,
so we urge that every protocol parameter, for either public or
private usage, be explicitly assigned by the IANA. Private
protocols often become public. Programmers are often tempted to
choose a "random" value, or guess the next unassigned value of a
parameter; both are hazardous.
The IANA is tasked to avoid frivolous assignments and to
distinguish different assignments uniquely. The IANA accomplishes
both goals by requiring a technical description of each protocol
or service to which a value is to be assigned. Judgment on the
adequacy of the description resides with the IANA. In the case of
a standards track or Experimental protocol, the corresponding
technical specifications provide the required documentation for
IANA. For a proprietary protocol, the IANA will keep confidential
any writeup that is supplied, but at least a short (2 page)
writeup is still required for an assignment.
To contact the IANA for information or to request a number,
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keyword or parameter assignment send an email message to
"iana@isi.edu".
2.6. Review and Approval
A standards action -- entering a particular specification into, or
advancing it within, the standards track -- shall be recommended
to the appropriate IETF Area Director, or to the Chairman of the
IETF, by the individual or group that is responsible for the
specification. Usually, the recommendation will come from an IETF
Working Group. The Area Director or IETF chairman, in
consultation with the IESG, shall determine if an independent
technical review of the specification is required, and shall
commission one if necessary.
When a specification is sufficiently important in terms of its
potential impact on the Internet or on the suite of Internet
protocols, the IESG shall form a special review and analysis
committee to prepare an evaluation of the specification. Such a
committee is commissioned to provide an objective basis for
agreement within the Internet community that the specification is
ready for advancement. Furthermore, when the criteria for
advancement along the standards track for an important class of
specifications (e.g., routing protocols [6]) are not universally
recognized, the IESG shall commission the development and
publication of category-specific acceptance criteria.
The IESG shall determine whether a specification satisfies the
applicable criteria for the recommended action (see Sections 3.2
and 3.3 of this document) and shall communicate its findings to
the IETF to permit a final review by the general Internet
community. This IETF notification shall be via electronic mail to
the IETF mailing list; in addition, there will often be a
presentation or statement by the appropriate working group or Area
Director during an IETF plenary meeting. Any significant issues
that have not been resolved satisfactorily during the development
of the specification may be raised at this time for final
resolution by the IESG.
The IESG shall communicate to the IAB its recommendation for
action, with a citation to the most current version of the
document. The IETF shall be notified by email of any such
recommendation. If the IAB finds a significant problem, or needs
clarification on a particular point, it shall resolve the matter
with the Working Group and its chairperson and/or the document
author, with the assistance and concurrence of the IESG and the
relevant IETF Area Director.
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Following IAB approval and any necessary editorial work, the RFC
Editor shall publish the specification as an RFC. The
specification shall then be removed from the Internet Drafts
directory.
2.7. Entering the Standards Track
A specification that is potentially an Internet Standard may
originate from:
(a) an IAB-sponsored effort (typically an IETF Working Group),
(b) independent activity by individuals, or
(c) an external organization.
In cases (b) and (c), the work might be tightly integrated with
the work of an existing IETF Working Group, or it might be offered
for standardization without prior IETF involvement. In most
cases, a specification resulting from an effort that took place
outside of an IETF Working Group context will be submitted to an
appropriate Working Group for evaluation and refinement; if
necessary, an appropriate Working Group will be created.
For externally-developed specifications that are well-integrated
with existing Working Group efforts, a Working Group is assumed to
afford adequate community review of the accuracy and applicability
of the specification. If a Working Group is unable to resolve all
technical and usage questions, additional independent review may
be necessary. Such reviews may be done within a Working Group
context, or by an ad hoc review committee established specifically
for that purpose. It is the responsibility of the appropriate
IETF Area Director to determine what, if any, review of an
external specification is needed and how it shall be conducted.
2.8. Advancing in the Standards Track
A specification shall remain at the Proposed Standard level for at
least 6 months and at the Draft Standard level for at least 4
months.
A specification may be (indeed, is likely to be) revised as it
advances through the standards track. At each stage, the IESG
shall determine the scope and significance of the revision to the
specification, and, if necessary and appropriate, modify the
recommended action. Minor revisions are expected, and they will
not affect advancement through the standards track. A significant
revision may require that the specification accumulate more
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experience at its current maturity level before progressing.
Finally, if the specification has been changed very significantly,
the IESG may decide to treat the revision as if it were a new
document, re-entering the standards track at the beginning.
A specification that has not reached the maturity level of
Standard within twenty-four months of first becoming a Proposed
Standard shall be reviewed for viability by the IESG, which shall
recommend either termination or continuation of the development
effort to the IAB. Such a recommendation shall be communicated to
the IETF via electronic mail to the IETF mailing list, to allow
the Internet community an opportunity to comment. This provision
is not intended to threaten legitimate and active Working Group
efforts, but rather to provide an administrative mechanism for
terminating a moribund effort.
2.9. Revising a Standard
A recommendation to revise an established Internet Standard shall
be evaluated by the IESG with respect to the operational impact of
introducing a new version while the previous version is still in
use. If the IESG accepts the recommendation, the new version must
progress through the full Internet standardization process as if
it were a completely new specification.
Once the new version has reached the Standard level, it may
immediately replace the previous version. In some cases, both
versions may remain as Internet Standards to honor the
requirements of an installed base; however, the relationship
between the previous and the new versions must be explicitly
stated in the text of the new version or in another appropriate
document (e.g., an Applicability Statement; see Section 3.1.2).
3. NOMENCLATURE
3.1. Types of Specifications
The specifications subject to the Internet standardization process
fall into two categories: Technical Specifications (TS) and
Applicability Statements (AS).
3.1.1. Technical Specification (TS)
A Technical Specification is any description of a protocol,
service, procedure, convention, or format. It may completely
describe all of the relevant aspects of its subject, or it may
leave one or more parameters or options unspecified. A TS may
be completely self-contained, or it may incorporate material
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from other specifications by reference to other documents
(which may or may not be Internet Standards).
A TS shall include a statement of its scope and the general
intent for its use (domain of applicability). Thus, a TS that
is inherently specific to a particular context shall contain a
statement to that effect. However, a TS does not specify
requirements for its use within the Internet; these
requirements, which depend on the particular context in which
the TS is incorporated by different system configurations, is
defined by an Applicability Statement.
3.1.2. Applicability Statement (AS)
An Applicability Statement specifies how, and under what
circumstances, one or more TSs are to be applied to support a
particular Internet capability. An AS may specify uses for TSs
that are not Internet Standards, as discussed in Section 4.
An AS identifies the relevant TSs and the specific way in which
they are to be combined, and may also specify particular values
or ranges of TS parameters or subfunctions of a TS protocol
that must be implemented. An AS also specifies the
circumstances in which the use of a particular TS is required,
recommended, or elective.
An AS may describe particular methods of using a TS in a
restricted "domain of applicability", such as Internet routers,
terminal servers, Internet systems that interface to Ethernets,
or datagram-based database servers.
The broadest type of AS is a comprehensive conformance
specification, commonly called a "requirements document", for a
particular class of Internet systems [3,4,5], such as Internet
routers or Internet hosts.
An AS may not have a higher maturity level in the standards
track than any TS to which the AS applies. For example, a TS
at Draft Standard level may be referenced by an AS at the
Proposed Standard or Draft Standard level, but not an AS at the
Standard level. Like a TS, an AS does not come into effect
until it reaches Standard level.
Although TSs and ASs are conceptually separate, in practice an
Internet Standard RFC may include elements of both an AS and one
or more TSs in a single document. For example, Technical
Specifications that are developed specifically and exclusively for
some particular domain of applicability, e.g., for mail server
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hosts, often contain within a single specification all of the
relevant AS and TS information. In such cases, no useful purpose
would be served by deliberately distributing the information among
several documents just to preserve the formal AS/TS distinction.
However, a TS that is likely to apply to more than one domain of
applicability should be developed in a modular fashion, to
facilitate its incorporation by multiple ASs.
3.2. Standards Track Maturity Levels
ASs and TSs go through stages of development, testing, and
acceptance. Within the Internet standards process, these stages
are formally labeled "maturity levels".
This section describes the maturity levels and the expected
characteristics of specifications at each level. The general
procedures for developing a specification and processing it
through the maturity levels along the standards track were
discussed in Section 2 above.
3.2.1. Proposed Standard
The entry-level maturity for the standards track is "Proposed
Standard". A Proposed Standard specification is generally
stable, has resolved known design choices, is believed to be
well-understood, has received significant community review, and
appears to enjoy enough community interest to be considered
valuable.
Usually, neither implementation nor operational experience is
required for the designation of a specification as a Proposed
Standard. However, such experience is highly desirable, and
will usually represent a strong argument in favor of a Proposed
Standard designation. Furthermore, the IAB may require
implementation and/or operational experience prior to granting
Proposed Standard status to a specification that materially
affects the core Internet protocols or that specifies behavior
that may have significant operational impact on the Internet.
Typically, such a specification will be published initially in
the Experimental state (see below), which is not part of the
standards track, and moved to the standards track only after
sufficient implementation or operational experience has been
obtained.
A Proposed Standard should have no known technical omissions
with respect to the requirements placed upon it. In some
cases, the IESG may recommend that the requirements be
explicitly reduced in order to allow a protocol to advance into
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the Proposed Standard state. This can happen if the
specification is considered to be useful and necessary (and
timely), even absent the missing features. For example, some
protocols have been advanced by explicitly deciding to omit
security features at the Proposed Standard level, since an
overall security architecture was still under development.
3.2.2. Draft Standard
A specification from which at least two independent and
interoperable implementations have been developed, and for
which adequate operational experience has been obtained, may be
elevated to the "Draft Standard" level. This is a major
advance in status, indicating a strong belief that the
specification is mature and will be useful.
A Draft Standard must be well-understood and known to be quite
stable, both in its semantics and as a basis for developing an
implementation. A Draft Standard may still require additional
or more widespread field experience, since it is possible for
implementations based on Draft Standard specifications to
demonstrate unforeseen behavior when subjected to large-scale
use in production environments.
3.2.3. Standard
A specification for which significant implementation and
operational experience has been obtained may be elevated to the
Standard level. A Standard is characterized by a high degree
of technical maturity and by a generally held belief that the
specified protocol or service provides significant benefit to
the Internet community.
3.3. Non-Standards Track Maturity Levels
Not every TS or AS is on the standards track. A TS may not be
intended to be an Internet Standard, or it may be intended for
eventual standardization but not yet ready to enter the standards
track. A TS or AS may have been superseded by more recent
Internet Standards, or have otherwise fallen into disuse or
disfavor. Such specifications are labeled with one of three
"non-standards track" maturity levels: "Historic", "Experimental",
and "Informational".
3.3.1. Historic
A TS or AS that has been superseded by a more recent
specification or is for any other reason considered to be
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obsolete is assigned to the "Historic" level. (Purists have
suggested that the word should be "Historical"; however, at
this point the use of "Historic" is historical.)
3.3.2. Experimental
The "Experimental" designation on a TS permits widespread
dissemination (through publication according to the procedures
defined by this document) with explicit caveats: it may
specify behavior that has not been thoroughly analyzed or is
poorly understood; it may be subject to considerable change;
it may never be a candidate for the formal standards track;
and it may be discarded in favor of some other proposal.
Any TS that is not an immediate candidate for Internet
standardization is appropriate for publication as Experimental.
Interested parties are thereby given the opportunity to gain
experience with implementations and to report their findings to
the community of interest, but the specification is explicitly
not recommended for general production use.
3.3.3. Informational
An "Informational" specification is published for the general
information of the Internet community, and does not represent
an Internet community consensus or recommendation.
Specifications that have been prepared outside of the Internet
community and are not incorporated into the Internet standards
process by any of the provisions of Section 4 may be published
as Informational RFCs, with the permission of the owner. Such
a document is not an Internet Standard in any sense.
3.4. Requirement Levels
An AS may apply one of the following "requirement levels" to each
of the TSs to which it refers:
(a) Required: Implementation of the referenced TS, as specified
by the AS, is required to achieve minimal conformance. For
example, IP and ICMP must be implemented by all Internet
systems using the TCP/IP Protocol Suite.
(b) Recommended: Implementation of the referenced TS is not
required for minimal conformance, but experience and/or
generally accepted technical wisdom suggest its desirability
in the domain of applicability of the AS. Vendors are
strongly encouraged to include the functions, features, and
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protocols of Recommended TSs in their products, and should
omit them only if the omission is justified by some special
circumstance.
(c) Elective: Implementation of the referenced TS is optional
within the domain of applicability of the AS; that is, the AS
creates no explicit necessity to apply the TS. However, a
particular vendor may decide to implement it, or a particular
user may decide that it is a necessity in a specific
environment.
As noted in Section 2.5, there are TSs that are not in the
standards track or that have been retired from the standards
track, and are therefore not required, recommended, or elective.
Two additional "requirement level" designations are available for
such TSs:
(d) Limited Use: The TS is considered appropriate for use only
in limited or unique circumstances. For example, the usage
of a protocol with the "Experimental" designation should
generally be limited to those actively involved with the
experiment.
(e) Not Recommended: A TS that is considered to be inappropriate
for general use is labeled "Not Recommended". This may be
because of its limited functionality, specialized nature, or
historic status.
The "IAB Official Protocol Standards" RFC lists a general
requirement level for each TS, using the nomenclature defined in
this section. In many cases, more detailed descriptions of the
requirement levels of particular protocols and of individual
features of the protocols will be found in appropriate ASs.
4. EXTERNAL STANDARDS AND SPECIFICATIONS
Many de facto and de jure standards groups other than the IAB/IETF
create and publish standards documents for network protocols and
services. When these external specifications play an important role
in the Internet, it is desirable to reach common agreements on their
usage -- i.e., to establish Internet Standards relating to these
external specifications.
There are two categories of external specifications:
(1) Open Standards
Accredited national and international standards bodies, such as
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ANSI, ISO, IEEE, and CCITT, develop a variety of protocol and
service specifications that are similar to Technical
Specifications (see glossary in Appendix A). These
specifications are generally de jure standards. Similarly,
national and international groups publish "implementors'
agreements" that are analogous to Applicability Statements,
capturing a body of implementation-specific detail concerned
with the practical application of their standards.
(2) Vendor Specifications
A vendor-specific specification that has come to be widely used
in the Internet may be treated by the Internet community as a de
facto "standard". Such a specification is not generally
developed in an open fashion, is typically proprietary, and is
controlled by the vendor or vendors that produced it.
To avoid conflict between competing versions of a specification, the
Internet community will not standardize a TS or AS that is simply an
"Internet version" of an existing external specification, unless an
explicit cooperative arrangement to do so has been made. There are,
however, several ways in which an external specification that is
important for the operation and/or evolution of the Internet may be
adopted for Internet use:
(a) Incorporation of an Open Standard
An Internet Standard TS or AS may incorporate an open external
standard by reference. The reference must be to a specific
version of the external standard, e.g., by publication date or
by edition number, according to the prevailing convention of the
organization that is responsible for the specification.
For example, many Internet Standards incorporate by reference
the ANSI standard character set "ASCII" [7].
(b) Incorporation of a Vendor Specification
Vendor-proprietary specifications may also be incorporated, by
reference to a specific version of the vendor standard. If the
vendor-proprietary specification is not widely and readily
available, the IAB may request that it be published as an
Informational RFC.
In order for a vendor-proprietary specification to be
incorporated within the Internet standards process, the
proprietor must agree in writing to the IAB that "right to use"
licenses will be available on a non-discriminatory basis and at
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a reasonable cost. See also Sections 5 and 6.
In addition, the IAB/IETF will generally not favor a particular
vendor's proprietary specification over the technically
equivalent and competing specifications of other vendors by
making it "required" or "recommended".
(c) Assumption
An IETF Working Group may start with a vendor's (or other
body's) voluntarily contributed specification, and independently
evolve the specification into a TS or AS. Here "independently"
means that the IETF work is not constrained by conditions
imposed by the owner of the original specification; however,
the continued participation of the original owner in the IETF
work is likely to be valuable, and is encouraged. The IAB must
receive a formal delegation of responsibility from the original
owner that gives the IAB/IETF responsibility for evolution of
the specification.
As provided by section 3.1.2, an AS that specifies how an external
technical specification should be applied in the Internet,
incorporating the external specification by reference, may become an
Internet Standard.
5. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS
Prior to the approval of a specification as a Proposed Standard, all
interested parties are required to disclose to the IAB the existence
of any intellectual property right claims known to them that might
apply to any aspect of the Proposed Standard.
This requirement refers specifically to disclosure of the *existence*
of a current or anticipated claim of an intellectual property right,
not the details of the asserted right itself.
6. PATENT POLICY
This section is tentative, subject to legal review.
There is no objection in principle to drafting an Internet Standard
in terms that include an item or items subject to patent rights that
may have been asserted in one or more countries, if it is considered
that technical reasons justify this approach. In such cases the
procedure described in this section shall be followed.
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6.1 Statement from Patent Holder
Prior to approval of the specification as a Proposed Standard, the
IAB shall receive from the known patent holders, in a form
acceptable to and approved by the IAB, either (a) assurance in the
form of a general disclaimer to the effect that the patent holder
does not hold and does not anticipate holding any right that would
be violated as a consequence of conformance to the standard, or
(b) assurance that
(1) a license will be made available without compensation to all
applicants desiring to utilize the patented items for the
purpose of implementing the standard, or
(2) a license will be made available to applicants under
specified reasonable terms and conditions that are, to the
satisfaction of the IAB, demonstrably free of any unfair
discrimination.
The terms and conditions of any license falling under (1) or (2)
shall be submitted to the IAB for review, together with a
statement of the number of independent licenses, if any, that have
accepted or indicated their acceptance of the terms and conditions
of the license.
In addition, the letter to the IAB must contain (c) assurance that
the patent holder does have the right to grant the license, and
(d) a notification of any other patent licenses that are required,
or else the assurance that no other licenses are required.
6.2 Record of Statement
A record of the patent holder's statement (and a statement from
the IAB of the basis for considering such terms and conditions to
be free of any unfair discrimination) shall be placed and retained
in the files of the IAB.
6.3 Notice
When the IAB receives from a patent holder the assurance set forth
in section 5.1(1) or 5.1(2), the corresponding Internet Standard
shall include a note as follows:
"NOTE: The user's attention is called to the possibility that
compliance with this standard may require the use of an invention
or work covered by patent claims.
"By publication of this standard, no position is taken with
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respect to the validity of this claim or of any patent rights in
connection therewith. The patent holder has, however, filed a
statement of willingness to grant a license under these rights, on
reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms and conditions, to
applicants desiring to obtain such a license. Details may be
obtained from the IAB."
6.4 Identifying Patents
The IAB shall not be responsible for identifying all patents for
which a license may be required by an Internet Standard, nor for
conducting inquiries into the legal validity or scope of those
patents that are brought to its attention.
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND REFERENCES
This document represents the combined output of the Internet
Activities Board and the Internet Engineering Steering Group, the
groups charged with managing the processes described in this
document. Major contributions to the text were made by Bob Braden,
Vint Cerf, Lyman Chapin, Dave Crocker, and Barry Leiner. Helpful
comments and suggestions were made by a number of IETF members.
[1] Cerf, V., "The Internet Activities Board", RFC 1160, IAB, May
1990.
[2] Postel, J., "IAB Official Protocol Standards", RFC 1280, IAB,
March 1992.
[3] Braden, R., Editor, "Requirements for Internet Hosts --
Communication Layers", RFC 1122, IETF, October 1989.
[4] Braden, R., Editor, "Requirements for Internet Hosts --
Application and Support", RFC 1123, IETF, October 1989.
[5] Almquist, P., Editor, "Requirements for IP Routers", in
preparation.
[6] Hinden, R., "Internet Engineering Task Force Internet Routing
Protocol Standardization Criteria", RFC 1264, BBN, October 1991.
[7] ANSI, Coded Character Set -- 7-Bit American Standard Code for
Information Interchange, ANSI X3.4-1986.
[8] Reynolds, J., and J. Postel, "Assigned Numbers", RFC 1060, ISI,
March 1990.
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[9] Postel, J., "Introduction to the STD Notes", RFC 1311, ISI,
March 1992.
APPENDIX A: GLOSSARY
ANSI: American National Standards Institute
CCITT: Consultative Committee for International Telephone and
Telegraphy.
A part of the UN Treaty Organization: the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU).
DARPA: (U.S.) Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
ISO: International Organization for Standardization
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APPENDIX B: FUTURE ISSUES
This memo resulted from an effort to document the current standards
procedures in the Internet community. At the time of publication,
Sections 5 and 6 are still undergoing legal review. In addition,
there are important issues under consideration of how to handle
copyrights and other issues of intellectual property. This memo is
being published with these matters unresolved, due to its importance.
Pre-publication review of this document resulted in a number of
useful suggestions from members of the Internet community, and opened
up several new issues. The IAB and IESG will continue to consider
these questions and attempt to resolve these issues; the results will
be be incorporated in future versions of this memo.
For future reference, this appendix records the outstanding
suggestions and issues.
It has been suggested that additional procedures in the following
areas should be considered.
o Appeals Procedure
Should there be some formal appeals procedure for correcting
abuses or procedural failures, at each decision point in the
process?
o Tracking Procedure
Should there be a formal procedure for tracking problems and
change requests, as a specification moves through the standards
track? Such a procedure might include written responses, which
were cataloged and disseminated, or simply a database that
listed changes between versions.
o Rationale Documentation
Should the procedures require written documentation of the
rationale for the design decisions behind each specification at
the Draft Standard and Standard levels?
o Application-Layer Standards
Should there be some way to "standardize" application-layer
protocols that are not going to become Internet Standards?
There were suggestions for fine-tuning of the existing procedures:
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o Increase minimum time in Internet Draft directory from 2 weeks
to 1 month.
o Place explicit time limit, on IESG and IAB action on suggested
standards changes. Limits suggested: three months.
If it were necessary to extend the time for some reason, the
IETF would have to be explicitly notified.
o Change minimum time at Draft Standard from 4 to 5 months, to
ensure that an IETF meeting will intervene.
o There were differing suggestions on how to balance between early
implementation of specifications available only as Internet
Drafts, and ensuring that everyone is clear that such an
Internet Draft has no official status and is subject to change
at any time. One suggestion was that vendors should not claim
compliance with an Internet Draft.
Finally, there were suggestions for improvements in the documentation
of the standards procedures.
o Discuss the impact, if any, of export control laws on the
Internet standardization process.
It was observed that the Requirements RFCs contain "negative"
requirement levels: MUST NOT and SHOULD NOT. Such levels are
not recognized in this Procedures document.
o Document needs to more clearly explain the criteria for choosing
the Experimental vs. Informational category for an off-track
specification. Ref. sections 3.3.2, 3.3.4.
o Develop recommended wording for citations to Internet Drafts,
which makes clear the provisional, unofficial nature of that
document.
o Consider changing the name attached to a fully-adopted standard
from "Standard" to some qualified term like "Full Standard".
o It has been suggested that the document should more strongly
encourage the use of specifications from other standards bodies,
with Internet-specific changes to be made only for compelling
reasons. Further, the justification of the compelling
requirement would be subject to special review.
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Security Considerations
Security issues are not substantially discussed in this memo.
Author's Address
A. Lyman Chapin
BBN Communications Corporation
150 Cambridge Park Drive
Cambridge, MA 02140
Phone: 617-873-3133
Fax: 617-873-4086
Email: Lyman@BBN.COM
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