The Internet Engineering Task Force IETF ( www.ietf.org ) is an open , all voulenteer international standards organization consisting of vendors, networks designers , researchers etc with the main focus of evolution of the internet architecture and the smooth operation of it. it is an activity under the umbrella of the internet society (ISOC), and it's overseen by the internet architecture board (IAB) which provides architectural guidance and works as a liaison for IETF.

the IETF issues RFC's that include new technologies, innovations, and researches that can be utilized for the internet technologies, Engineers and researches can publish the RFC for peer view or to convey new concepts and innovations, the IETF adopts some of the proposals published as internet standards.

As stated in request for comment (RFC) number 3935 the mission of the IETF is to make the internet work better and " to produce high quality, relevant technical and engineering documents that influence the way people design, use, and manage the Internet in such a way as to make the Internet work better. These documents include protocol standards, best current practices, and informational documents of various kinds." the IETF mission statement is documented in RFC 3935.

The IETF is organized into a large number of working groups (WG) , each dealing with a spesific topic, the working groups are organized into areas, with each area focusing into a certain subject, each area is directed by an Area Director (AD) (and sometimes 2 AD's) , the area directors along with the IETF chair, form the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) which is responsible for the overall operation of IETF.

The working groups are organized into eight Areas:
-Application area: contains the working groups that deal with applications ; wich use the ntewroks and security service to provide services to the end user.
-General area: contains the WG's that focus on supporting, updating and maintaining the IETF's standards developement process.
internet area : contains the working groups that focus on the layer 2 & 3 issues such as IP , IPv6, TCP and applying these protocols to wireless networks , resilinet packet rings , etc
-Operations and management area : joins the WG's that work on the various aspects of operation and management such as authentication , authorization and accounting, provisioning of wireless acces points, management support for storage , etc
-Real-time applications and infrastructure area: focuses on real-time technologies such as IP-telephony, video/audio transport, multimedia , etc
-Routing area: as the name implies ; this area focuses on the many routing issues such as MPLS , OSPF, which are all routing technologies
security area : focuses on the internet security issues
transport area: contains the WG's that focus on the OSI transport layer protocol issues.

Unlike IEEE, which works on voting ; The working groups operate on consensus decision-making, a desicion making process that not only seeks the agreement of the majority , but also tries to solve the objections of the minority to reach the best agreeable desicion.

Greetings
My name is Alan Noraddin, I'm an ITP student from Iraq ,working towards my masters degree in interdisciplinary telecom,
like the majority of the students attending the TLEN 5106 class , I have a technical background ,I got my bachelors degree in electronics and communication from the university of baghdad, I was granted a fulbright scolarship last year, coming to CU was a bit of coincidence, to tell the truth , I was looking for a program like ITP but didn't know where to look, so the guys at fulbright program found it for me , guess I'm lucky to be here, I'm enjoying every minute of it , in class or off class !

After graduation I worked for almost two years for a chinese telecom equipment vendor, working in many areas, post sales , pre sales , project management , project supervision , i've done a little bit of everything , but not enough, there's still more to learn...

that's why I chose this class, engineers are at least half business, and in order to succeed in the engineering world, one must have adequate business/policy background, good management/communication skills and oh yeah , a technical background can be a great help too!!!
In addition to that, being a fulbright scholar , it's always important to learn about how internationl telecom laws and policies work, how developing countries work to upgrade their telecom sector to meet the demands of a growing and highly competitive sector, something that can help my country, iraq that made a huge leap from government controled telecom sector in 2003 to a competition-based buisness after 1 year only!!!!
What made me choose telecom " besides being well paid in the industry, obviously " is that it's a booming industry despite the ups and downs in it, it's almost clear that the world craves more communication, telecom is now involved in every aspect of business, politics and of course our lifestyle, who can live without a cell phone now ??? let alone a regular land line phone!