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Standards & bodies

IETF

The Internet Engineering Task Force, the open standards body that publishes the RFCs defining internet protocols, including several designed for constrained IoT devices.

The IETF develops the protocols the internet runs on, from IP and TCP to TLS and HTTP, through an open process in which anyone can participate and specifications are published as RFCs. For IoT its working groups produced CoAP, 6LoWPAN, DTLS profiles for constrained devices, CBOR and the related security and software update formats.

The IETF’s contribution to IoT is making standard internet protocols fit small devices rather than inventing a separate network. That choice is why a sensor on a Thread mesh can carry an IPv6 address and talk to a server with the same security model as a web browser. The limit is that the IETF defines transport and application protocols, not data models or certification programs, which other bodies such as OMA SpecWorks and the Connectivity Standards Alliance supply.

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