We have been using the Internet for ages since its advent to facilitate information and communication routes with one another. The advent of this new mailing list consensus did not only bridge the gap of distance but as well changed our habits and attitudes. Coming as good news for development and technology seekers, the swift swap in culture formatted some attitudes in job seekers who will do anything to hack and make preys of innocent buddies on this network which reduced the World to a global village. Experts brainstormed on ways to curb ills on this network and devised a strong mechanism to break away old bad habits in stray culprits waiting to make ignorant visitors victims at any given opportunity .
Stakeholders of the
Internet Engineering Task Force (
IETF) met for the first time on January 16, 1986 to develop and promote Internet Standards with no formal membership requirements. Cooperating closely with the
W3C and
ISO/
IEC standards bodies and dealing in particular with standards of the
Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP), all participants and managers are volunteers, though their work is usually funded by their employers or sponsors.
The first IETF meeting was on January 16, 1986, consisting of 21
U.S.-government-funded researchers. It was a continuation of the work of
the earlier
GADS Task Force.
Initially, it met quarterly, but from 1991, it has been meeting 3
times a year. Representatives from non-governmental entities were
invited starting with the fourth IETF meeting, during October of that
year. Since that time all IETF meetings have been open to the public.
The majority of the IETF's work is done on mailing lists, and meeting
attendance is not required for contributors.
The initial meetings were very small, with fewer than 35 people in
attendance at each of the first five meetings. The maximum attendance
during the first 13 meetings was only 120 attendees. This occurred at
the 12th meeting held during January 1989. These meetings have grown in
both participation and scope a great deal since the early 1990s; it had a
maximum attendance of 2,810 at the December 2000 IETF held in San
Diego, CA. Attendance declined with industry restructuring during the
early 2000s, and is currently around 1,200.
During the early 1990s the IETF changed institutional form from an
activity of the U.S. government to an independent, international
activity associated with the Internet Society.
There are statistics available that show who the top contributors have been, by RFC publication.
While the IETF only allows for participation by individuals, and not by
corporations or governments, sponsorship information is available from
those same statistics.
The IETF is organized into a large number of working groups and informal discussion groups (BOF),
each dealing with a specific topic. Each group is intended to complete
work on that topic and then disband. Each working group has an appointed
chairperson (or sometimes several co-chairs), along with a charter that
describes its focus, and what and when it is expected to produce. It is
open to all who want to participate, and holds discussions on an open
mailing list or at IETF meetings, where the entry fee is currently (2013/10/24) USD $650 per person.
[3] The mailing list consensus is the primary basis for decision making. There is no voting procedure, as it operates on
rough consensus process.
The working groups are organized into areas by subject matter.
Current areas include Applications, General, Internet, Operations and
Management, Real-time Applications and Infrastructure, Routing,
Security, and Transport.
[4] Each area is overseen by an
area director
(AD), with most areas having two co-ADs. The ADs are responsible for
appointing working group chairs. The area directors, together with the
IETF Chair, form the
Internet Engineering Steering Group
(IESG), which is responsible for the overall operation of the IETF. The
groups will normally be closed down once the work described in its
charter is finished. In some cases, the WG will instead have its charter
updated to take on new tasks as appropriate.
The IETF is formally a part of the
Internet Society. The IETF is overseen by the
Internet Architecture Board (IAB), which oversees its external relationships, and relations with the
RFC Editor.
[5] The IAB is also jointly responsible for the
IETF Administrative Oversight Committee (IAOC), which oversees the
IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA), which provides logistical, etc. support for the IETF. The IAB also manages the
Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), with which the IETF has a number of cross-group relations.
A committee of ten randomly chosen volunteers who participate
regularly at meetings is vested with the power to appoint, reappoint,
and remove members of the IESG, IAB, IASA, and the IAOC.
[6]
To date, no one has been removed by a NOMCOM (Nominating Commitee),
although several people have resigned their positions, requiring
replacements. More Details on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Engineering_Task_Force
Beginning as a
tool for a select group of engineers and scientists associated with
academia or government and evolving rapidly into the World Wide Web open
to anyone with a computer and a telephone connection, the Internet has
transformed the way we conduct research, communicate, and make purchases
ranging from groceries and airline tickets to the latest books and
music or clothing and furniture. How we got from there to here on the
information highway is the story of a host of individuals and
breakthrough thinking.
See Details * http://www.greatachievements.org/?id=3736
jointly with 
The investigation into Kabila's assassination led to 135 people being
tried before a special military tribunal – including 4 children. The
alleged ringleader, Colonel Eddy Kapend (one of Kabila's cousins), and
25 others were sentenced to death in January 2003, but not executed. Of
the other defendants 64 were jailed, with sentences from six months to
life, and 45 were exonerated. Some individuals were also accused of
being involved in a plot to overthrow his son. Among them was Kabila's
special advisor Emmanuel DUNGIA, former ambassador to South Africa. Many people believe the trial was flawed and the convicted defendants are innocent. More Details * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurent-D%C3%A9sir%C3%A9_Kabila
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