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Liaisons

The IETF has a number of liaison relationships with other organizations, frequently other Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) or other Internet governance organizations.

IETF liaison managers and liaisons to other organizations or subgroups within organizations are appointed by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB).

For more information about the procedures that govern IETF liaisons, please see RFC 4052 “IAB Liaison Management” and RFC 4053 (BCP 103) “Procedures for Handling Liaison Statements to and from the IETF.”

The primary contact on liaison negotiation is the IAB. You can send email to the IAB liaison coordinators at liaison-coordination@iab.org. The current liaison coordinators are Suresh Krishnan, Mirja Kühlewind, and Qin Wu.

When and how are new liaisons established?

The IAB is responsible for establishing new formal liaison relationships if conditions warrant appointing a specific person or persons to such a task. Establishing a liaison relationship can provide the framework for ongoing communications to:

  • Prevent inadvertent duplication of effort, without obstructing either organization from pursuing its own mandate
  • Provide authoritative information about one organization’s dependence on the other’s work

New liaison appointments are rare, since the best way for organizations to work with the IETF is to do so by participating in the relevant working groups, or to have IETF working group members participate directly in the other organization’s structures.

How are formal liaison statements sent and received?

A list of sent and received liaison statements and their status is available on the IETF Datatracker.

If a formal established liaison relationship exists (see table below), the appointed liaison manager is responsible for managing, tracking and ensuring all outgoing liaison statements (sent by the IETF or some group within the IETF) and incoming liaison statements (sent by the other SDO) are processed and handled. Each liaison manager has a corresponding contact point from the other SDO.

If no formal established liaison relationship exists, it is still possible to send formal liaison statements. Please contact liaison-coordination@iab.org before sending any statements for this case.

To submit a liaison statement, please reach out to the appropriate liaison manager, or the IAB liaison coordinators. In more detail, this means:

  • Outgoing (sent by the IETF or a group within the IETF)
    • Contact the liaison manager if the organization you want to send the liaison statement to is listed below.
    • If no liaison manager is assigned for the organization, please email the IAB liaison coordinators at liaison-coordination@iab.org instead.
  • Incoming (sent by another SDO to the IETF or a group within the IETF)
    • Contact the person responsible for liaison management in the other SDO. If you don’t know the correct contact, please ask the respective IETF liaison manager below or send an email to liaison-coordination@iab.org.
    • If you are the person responsible for liaison management in the other SDO and you have not sent liaison statements to the IETF before, please contact liaison-coordination@iab.org for assistance before you send liaison statements.
Current liaison managers and appointments

Liaison Managers

SDO IETF Liaison Manager More Info Contact
3GPP Charles Eckel RFC 3113 3gpp-liaison@ietf.org 
Broadband Forum David Sinicrope   bbf-liaison@ietf.org
CableLabs Jason Weil RFC 4965 cablelabs-liaison@ietf.org
ECMA TC39 Matt Miller   ecma-tc39-liaison@ietf.org 
IEEE 802.1 János Farkas RFC 7241 ieee-8021-liaison@ietf.org 
IEEE-SA Russ Housley   ieee-sa-liaison@ietf.org 
ISO/IEC JTC1 SC2 Patrik Fältström RFC 3718, Section 7 iso-jtc1-sc2-liaison@ietf.org 
ISO/IEC JTC1 SC29 Stephan Wenger   iso-jtc1-sc29-liaison@ietf.org 
ISO/IEC JTC1 SC6 Warren Kumari RFC 3563  iso-jtc1-sc6-liaison@ietf.org 
ISO/TC46 Peter Koch   iso-tc46-liaison@ietf.org 
ISO/TC154 Michael Douglass Request to add the IETF as an external liaison to ISO/TC154 iso-tc154-liaison@ietf.org 
ISO/TC204 Alexandre Petrescu   iso-tc204-liaison@ietf.org 
ITU-T Scott Mansfield RFC 6756 itu-t-liaison@ietf.org 
ITU-T SG15 (optical control plane) Deborah Brungard   itu-t-sg15-liaison@ietf.org 
Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG) Barry Leiba   m3aawg-liaison@ietf.org 
Unicode Patrik Fältström RFC 3718 unicode-liaison@ietf.org 
W3C Martin Thomson   w3c-liaison@ietf.org 

Appointments

Other external liaison appointments that participate as either a voting member or non-voting liaison from the IAB to these specific groups of the organization; these are not liaison managers that handle liaison statements, but rather represent the views of the IETF in these organization’s discussions and decision making processes.

SDO IETF Appointee Term More Info
Community Coordination Group Russ Housley (2017-2025), Barry Leiba (2017-2025), Tim Wicinski (2018-2024) Two-year renewable term. No term limits. See RFC 8090  "IANA IPR Community Agreement", 21 September 2016
ICANN Board of Directors Harald Alvestrand (2018-2024) Two-year renewable term. No term limits RFC 2691
ICANN NomCom Suzanne Woolf (2023) One-year renewable term. After two consecutive terms, at least two years must elapse before the individual is eligible to serve again. ICANN Bylaws, Article 8 
ICANN Root Server System Governance Working Group (GWG) Geoff Huston (2020-present), Jim Reid (2022-present) No specified term length or limits  Root Server System Governance Working Group (RSS GWG)
ICANN RSSAC Daniel Migault (2015-present) No specified term length or limits IAB liaison to ICANN Root Server System Advisory Committee (RSSAC)
ICANN RZERC Willem Toorop (2024-2025) One-year renewable term. Maximum four terms  RFC 8128
ICANN TLG Warren Kumari (2019-2025), Petr Špaček (2020-2026) Two-year renewable term. No term limits RFC 2691
Multi Stakeholder Platform on ICT Standardisation Mat Ford (2017-present), Olaf Kolkman (2023-present) No specified term length or limits