The IEEE 802 / IETF Relationship

This section describes how the existing processes within the IETF and IEEE 802 may be utilized to enable collaboration between the organizations.

IEEE 802 and IETF are similar in some ways, but different in others. When working on project that's of interest to both organizations, it's important to understand these differences.

Standardization in IEEE 802 takes place within Working Groups operating under an Executive Committee. Most Working Groups have one or more Task Groups. A Task Group is responsible for a project or group of projects. The IEEE 802 Executive Committee and Working Groups meet at plenary sessions in March, July and November. Most Working Groups hold interim meetings, usually in January, April and September. An IEEE 802 Orientation for new participants that gives an overview of IEEE 802 process is available. A good place to to learn more is the IEEE 802 Home Page: Participation in IEEE 802 Working Groups is by individual and is open. Individuals are required to declare their affiliation. Working Groups maintain membership rosters, with voting membership attained and retained on the basis of in-person meeting attendance. EDITOR'S NOTE: Do we need to explain "affiliation"? An individual is deemed "affiliated" with any individual or entity that has been, or will be, financially or materially supporting that individual's participation in a particular IEEE standards activity. This includes, but is not limited to, his or her employer and any individual or entity that has or will have, either directly or indirectly, requested, paid for, or otherwise sponsored his or her participation.

In the IETF, work is done in working groups (WGs), mostly through open, public mailing lists rather than face-to-face meetings. WGs are organized into areas, each area being managed by two co-area directors. Collectively, the area directors comprise the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Participation in the IETF is open to anyone (technically, anyone with access to e-mail sufficient to allow subscription to one or more IETF mailing lists). All IETF participants act as individuals. There are a small number of IETF procedures that recognize organizations that may sponsor IETF participants, but these are organizational and do not apply to the standard specification process itself. There is no concept of "IETF membership". A good place to to learn more is the IETF Home Page: To foster ongoing communication between IEEE 802 and IETF, it is important to identify and establish contact points within each organization. Contact points on the IETF side may include: An IETF area director is the individual responsible for overseeing a major focus of activity (an "Area"). These positions are relatively long- term (of several years) and offer the stability of contact points between the two organizations for a given topic. An IETF working group chair is an individual who is assigned to lead the work on a specific task within one particular area. These positions are working positions (of a year or more) that typically end when the work on a specific topic ends. Collaboration here is very beneficial to ensure the actual work gets done. It may be beneficial to establish additional contact points for specific topics of mutual interest. These contact points should be established early in the work effort, and in some cases the contact point identified by each organization may be the same individual. Note: The current list of IETF area directors and working group chairs can be found in the IETF working group charters.

The following sections outline a process that can be used to enable each group to be informed about the other's active and proposed new work items.

The responsibility is on individual IEEE 802 working groups to review the current IETF working groups to determine if there are any topics of mutual interest. Working group charters and active Internet-Drafts can be found on the IETF web site (http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/). If an IEEE 802 working group identifies a common area of work, the IEEE 802 working group leadership should contact both the IETF working group chair and the area director(s) responsible. This may be accompanied by a formal liaison statement (see Section X.X).

IEEE Working Group status reports are published at the beginning and end of each plenary at on the IEEE802 website:. Each Working Group includes a list of their active projects and the status. The charter of an IEEE 802 project is defined in an approved Project Authorization Request (PAR). PARs are accessible in IEEE Standards myProject:. Access requires an IEEE web account which is free and has no membership requirement. In myProject, a search on "View Active PARs" for 802 will bring up a list of all active IEEE 802 PARs. If an IETF working group identifies a common area of work or a need for coordination, the working group leadership should contact the IEEE 802 Working Group chair and Task Group chair. This may be accompanied by a formal liaison statement (see Section xx).

The IETF maintains a mailing list for the distribution of proposed new work items among standards development organizations. Many such items can be identified in proposed Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) sessions, as well as draft charters for working groups. The IETF forwards all such draft charters for all new and revised working groups and BOF session announcements to the IETF new-work mailing list. An IEEE 802 mailing list is subscribed to this list. Leadership of the IEEE working groups may subscribe to this IEEE 802 mailing list, which is maintained by the Executive Committee (EC). Each IEEE 802 Working Group will delegate at least one expert to subscribe to this list and be ready to dispatch any information relevant for their activity. This will enable the IEEE 802 working groups to monitor the new work items for possible overlap or interest to their IEEE 802 working group. It is expected that this mailing list will see a few messages per month. Each IEEE 802 working group chairman, or designated representative, may provide comments on these charters by responding to the IESG mailing list at iesg@ietf.org clearly indicating their IEEE 802 position and the nature of their concern. Plain-text email is preferred on the IESG mailing list. It should be noted that the IETF turnaround time for new working group charters can be as short as two weeks. As a result, the mailing list should be consistently monitored.

An IEEE project is initiated by approval of a Project Authorization Request (PAR) which includes a description of the scope of the work. Any IEEE 802 PARs which introduce new functionality are required to be available for review no less than 30 days prior to the Monday of the IEEE 802 plenary session where they will be considered. IEEE considers Five Criteria when deciding whether to approve new work: Broad Market Potential, Compatibility, Distinct Identity and Technical Feasibility. The criteria are defined in the IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee (LMSC) Operations Manual. The PARs are accompanied by responses on the 5 Criteria. Any comments on proposed PARs should be submitted to the Working Group chair and copied to the Executive Committee chair by e-mail not later than 5:00 PM Tuesday of the plenary session (in the time zone where the plenary is located).

During the course of IEEE 802 and IETF collaboration, it is important to share internal documents among the technical working groups. In addition, draft standards, Internet Drafts, and RFCs may also be distributed.

Each IEEE 802 standardization project is assigned to a Working Group (WG) for development. In IEEE 802, the working methods of the WGs vary in detail. The documentation system is one area in which WG operations differ, based on varying needs and traditions. In some cases, the WGs assign the core development to a subgroup (typically known as a Task Group or Task Force), and the documentation procedures may vary among he subgroups as well. Prior to project authorization, or on topics not directly related to development of a standard, the WG may consider and develop documents itself, or using other subgroups (standing committees, ad hocs, etc.). IEEE 802 also supports Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs) that conduct business and develop documents, although not standards. References here to WGs apply to TAGs as well.

In general, development of standards is IEEE 802 is contribution-driven. Content toward draft standards is submitted to WGs by individual participants, or groups of participants. Content toward other group documents (such as, for example, external communication statements or foundation documents underlying a draft standard) might also be contribution-driven. At some point, the group assembles contributed material to develop group documents, and revision takes place within group meetings or by assignment to editors. For the most part, the contributions toward discussion as well as the group documents (including minutes and other reports) are openly available to the public. Many IEEE 802 groups use a documentation system provided by IEEE and known as "Mentor". The list of these groups is available at IEEE 802 Mentor Home Page:. Mentor has some particularly notable aspects: The documentation system is structured and ordered, with documentation tags and unique numbering and revisioning. On-line documentation is available. Generally speaking, the archives are publicly and freely available. Limited search functionality is provided, and publicly-available search engines index the data. The ability to submit documents to Mentor is limited but is generally available to any interested party. An IEEE Account is required but can be easily and freely established IEEE Account Request:. If submission is protected, the privilege can be requested via the Mentor system (using the "Join group" link on each WG Mentor page) and would typically be granted by the WG documentation manager in a manual approval. Submitted documents are immediately available to the general public at the same instant they become available for consideration by the group. In most cases, WGs that use the Mentor system use it exclusively, so that any substantive document will be available through the system. In a few cases (for example, the IEEE 802 Executive Committee), document distribution is by multiple means (including an email reflector), so it may be difficult to compile a complete set of documents. Some WGs do not use the Mentor system. In this case, documents are nevertheless generally publically available and indexed. Typically, the index may be presented via a human-managed web site. In such cases, the contributions may be submitted via email to a document manager, so they may not be immediately available to the public. For WGs not using the Mentor system, it should be relatively straightforward to find documents of interest by reviewing the group's main web page, at IEEE 802 working group pages:, where [i] is the one-digit or two-digit numerical desigation for the WG or TAG. In some cases, links to documents may be available only by reviewing the WG or subgroup meeting minutes.

IEEE 802 Working Groups are open to contribution. In many cases, a WG or subgroup will issue a call for contributions with a specific technical solicitation, including deadlines and submission instructions. Some groups maintain specific submission procedures and specify a contribution cover sheet to clarify the status of the contribution.

The IEEE owns the copyright to draft standards developed within IEEE standardization projects. As a result, such drafts are never made publicly available. The IEEE-SA grants permission for an IEEE draft standard to be distributed without charge to the participants for that IEEE standards development project. Typically, such distribution is on the Internet under password protection, with the password provided to the members of the participating WG. Requests to the relevent WG chair for access to a draft for purposes of participation in the project are typically granted. In some cases, under an organizational agreement, the IEEE-SA allows for ready document exchange with other entities. No such agreement currently exists to cover exchanges between IEEE-SA and IETF.

IEEE standards, once approved, are published and made available for sale. They can be purchased from the IEEE Standards Store: . They are also available from other outlets, including the IEEE Xplore digital library: . The Get IEEE 802 program: grants public access to download individual IEEE 802 standards at no charge. IEEE 802 standards are added to the Get IEEE 802 program six months after publication.

Internet-Drafts are available on the IETF web site. IEEE 802 can make selected IEEE 802 documents at any stage of development available to the IETF by attaching them to a formal liaison statement. Although a communication can point to a URL where a non-ASCII document (e.g., Word) can be downloaded, attachments in proprietary formats to an IETF mailing list are discouraged. It should also be recognized that the official versions of all IETF documents are in ASCII.

During the course of IEEE 802 and IETF collaboration, it is important for technical experts to review documents of mutual interest and, when appropriate, to provide review comments to the approving body as the document moves through the approval process.

Need text here.

Technical contributions are welcome at any point in the IETF document review and approval process, but there are some points where contribution is more likely to be effective. When a working group is considering adoption of an individual draft. Adoption is often signaled on the working group's mailing list. When a working group issues a "Working Group Last Call" ("WGLC") for a draft. Although this is not a mandatory step in the document review and approval process, most IETF working groups do issue WGLCs for most working group documents. WGLC would be signaled on the working group's mailing list. When the Internet Engineering Steering Group issues an "IETF Last Call" ("Last Call") for a draft. This is similar in spirit to WGLC, but is a request for review and approval that is addressed to the larger IETF community. IETF Last Call is signaled on the IETF-Announce Mailing List, and comments and feedback are ordinarily directed to the IETF Discussion Mailing List.

With the areas of cooperation between IEEE 802 and IETF increasing, the document review process has extended beyond the traditional subjects of SNMP MIBs and AAA. For example, as part of the IETF CAPWAP WG charter, IEEE 802.11 was asked to review the CAPWAP Taxonomy Document [RFC4118]; Dorothy Stanley organized an ad hoc group for this purpose. IEEE 802.11 has also reviewed [IDSEL] and [IABLINK]. Within IETF, IEEE 802 comments are resolved using normal WG and IETF processes. IETF participants can comment as part of the IEEE 802 ballot process, regardless of their voting status within IEEE 802. Comments must be composed in the format specified for the ballot, and submitted by the ballot deadline.

Both IEEE 802 and IETF work best when people participate directly in work of mutual interest, but that's not always possible, and individuals speaking as individuals may not provide effective communication between the two SDOs. From time to time, it may be appropriate for a technical body in one SDO to communicate as a body with a technical body in the other SDO. This section describes the mechanisms used to provide formal communication between the two organizations, should that become necessary.

Need text here.