Liaison relationships

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 [email protected]. The current liaison coordinators are Suresh Krishnan, Warren Kumari, Yingzhen Qu, and Yaroslav Rosomakho.

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.

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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected].
  • 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 [email protected] for assistance before you send liaison statements.