“Make the Internet work better.”
There is no membership in the IETF. Anyone can participate by signing up to a working group mailing list, or registering for an IETF meeting. All IETF participants are considered volunteers and expected to participate as individuals, including those paid to participate.
The work of the IETF is to produce technical documents (RFCs) that define how Internet technology works in detail, and can be operated and managed at scale.
The IETF publishes its technical documentation as RFCs, an acronym for their historical title Requests for Comments. They describe the Internet’s technical foundations, such as addressing, routing, and transport technologies. RFCs also specify protocols like TLS 1.3, QUIC, and WebRTC that are used to deliver services used by billions of people every day, such as real-time collaboration, email, and the domain name system.