The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a technical standard-setting organization responsible for developing and maintaining the Internet’s core standards, including the DNS protocol and its security extensions and the current and next-generation versions of the Internet Protocol. The core standards the IETF develops define, on a basic level, how the Internet operates and what functions it is capable of performing. It is a voluntary, consensus-based standards body, whose participants include network operators, academics, and representatives of government and industry, among others.
Internet users express their opinions on how the Internet should operate to the IETF. Much of IETF’s work is conducted via e-mail lists, although it meets three times a year to discuss the Internet's operational and technical problems. If a problem deserves special attention, the IETF sets up a working group to discuss it. The working group eventually issues a report or recommendation, which can be either voluntarily accepted by the IETF or sent to the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) to be declared a standard.
The work of the IETF is coordinated by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) and the IAB which are affiliated with the Internet Society.
Among the key technical standards the IETF has worked on is the next generation of the Internet Protocol (IP), the foundation of the Internet — IP Version 6 (IPv6).