Process for Publication of IAB RFCs

From time to time, the IAB has cause to publish documents as Requests for Comments (RFCs). These occasions include the following: documents that arise from consideration of an issue by the IAB and are authored by the IAB through a nominated editor. documents that report on IAB activities, such as workshop reports, and are authored by a nominated editor, generally from among the activity participants. documents that are not the outcome of an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Working Group effort but that the IAB has determined would be of benefit to the IETF community to publish. Such documents need not necessarily be authored or revised by the IAB. The majority of documents published by the IAB will be classified as Informational RFCs (see ). Generally speaking, the IAB does not publish Standards-Track or Experimental RFCs. If the IAB has cause to publish a document as a Best Current Practice (BCP), it would fall under the approval process of the IETF standards stream of RFCs (see ).

In many cases, the IAB publishes documents to provide a permanent record of an IAB statement or position. In such cases, the IAB uses its internal discussion processes to refine the expression and technical content of the document, and the document is approved for publication if, and only if, the IAB is in agreement on its substantive content. For certain documents, it may not be appropriate for the IAB to take responsibility for technical correctness. For example, where the IAB has sponsored a workshop in which not all the participants were members of the IAB and/or not all the members of the IAB were present, approval by the IAB of a report of the workshop is used only to assert that the report is a faithful report of the proceedings of the workshop and that the matter is of interest to the community. Documents for which the IAB takes responsibility for technical correctness (the most usual case) will be indicated by noting the IAB as an author of the document, with individuals noted as editors or text authors. Other documents, such as workshop reports, will not specify the IAB as an author (although this does not preclude individual IAB members from being authors or editors). In general, the document (introductory) text should make plain the role of the IAB in publishing and supporting the text. Should the IAB have significant issues with any individual item in the document, a note may be included in the document explaining the issue.

The following is a description of the process used by the IAB to publish IAB documents as RFCs. The document is determined to be an IAB document by the IAB, as described in . The IAB publishes an IAB draft (draft-iab-*). Comments on the draft are reviewed and may be integrated into successive iterations of the draft. In addition to considering comments received on the draft, the IAB may elect to refer the document to individuals or groups and explicitly solicit comments as appropriate. For documents intended to be published as BCPs, the document is passed to the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) with a sponsoring Area Director (AD), and follows the process outlined in . For documents intended to be Informational RFCs, the remainder of this process is followed. The chair of the IAB issues an IETF-wide Call for Comment on the IETF Announce mailing list. The comment period is normally no shorter than four weeks. Comments received are considered for integration into the document. The IAB shall determine whether the document is ready for publication based on the comments received, or whether another round of document editing and, optionally, a further call for input is required. The document is passed to the RFC Editor for publication as an IAB document Informational RFC.

This document does not discuss matters with any particular security implications.

Bernard Aboba Loa Andersson Brian Carpenter Leslie Daigle Elwyn Davies Kevin Fall Olaf Kolkman Kurtis Lindqvist David Meyer David Oran Eric Rescorla Dave Thaler Lixia Zhang