More than 1,500 technical experts are coming together in Berlin from 28 July until 2 August at the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) Meeting to jointly work at the further evolution of the Internet and to develop tomorrow's protocol standards. As the global Internet’s premier technical standards body, the IETF is open to any interested person, and the results of its work are based on competence and the best technical arguments. In 106 working groups experts from 74 countries develop concepts to enhance security, speed and user-friendliness on the Internet – be it to secure routes, to provide extensions for mobile applications or to protect data in the cloud.

What starts as a draft working paper is discussed in the various expert groups – either at the IETF meetings or via mailing lists. Taking multiple iterations, the protocol or service is then developed and brought to standard maturity. One example is the TCP protocol which, as part of the Internet protocol family, forms an important basis for the Internet we know today. The standards that provide the form of the Domain Name System (DNS) developed in the IETF this way.

Based on open and freely available standards, DNS enables the resolution of domain names and their translation into IP addresses, and thus easy use of the Internet. Additional security is provided by security extensions like DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions), which was developed in the IETF and has been implemented as a standard by more than 100 country codes, including .de.

Other examples for IETF's successful standardization process are the possibility to use special characters in domain names – such as the German letter eszett (ß) as the latest implementation and numerous special characters of other languages – as well as a multitude of other Internet applications. This underscores the global importance of open standards and their creation through collective development work.

The meeting in Berlin is the 87th of its type and the second event since 1997 to be held in Germany. Reason enough for DENIC eG, which is organized as a not-for-profit cooperative and thus strongly committed to the entire Internet community and the open and participatory evolution of the Internet, to support IETF's work as platinum sponsor of the Berlin meeting.

As the meeting in Berlin too will have an impact on the way we will use the Internet in the future.

For further information please go to https://www.ietf.org/meeting/87.

Background Information:

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the Internet’s premier technical standards body. It gathers a large open international community of network designers, engineers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. The IETF seeks broad participation. The work of the IETF takes place online, largely through email lists, reducing barriers to participation and maximizing contributions from around the world. IETF Working Groups (WGs) are organized by topic into several areas (e.g., routing, transport, security, etc.).
For more information, see: http://www.ietf.org/