Internet standard

Internet standards are defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

They are documents that start out as Internet Drafts, become "Requests for
Comments" (RFCs), and then after this consulting process (generally) get
approved by the IESG as a standard.

Specifications that are intended to become Internet Standards evolve through
a set of maturity levels known as the standards track. These maturity levels
are "Proposed Standard", "Draft Standard", and "Standard"

A Proposed Standard specification is generally stable, has resolved known
design choices, is believed to be well-understood, has received significant
community review, and appears to enjoy enough community interest to be
considered valuable. However, further experience might result in a change or
even retraction of the specification before it advances. Usually, neither
implementation nor operational experience is required

A specification from which at least two independent and interoperable
implementations from different code bases have been developed, and for which
sufficient successful operational experience has been obtained, may be
elevated to the Draft Standard level.

A Draft Standard is normally considered to be a final specification, and
changes are likely to be made only to solve specific problems encountered.
In most circumstances, it is reasonable for vendors to deploy
implementations of Draft Standards into a disruption sensitive environment.

A specification for which significant implementation and successful
operational experience has been obtained may be elevated to the Internet
Standard level. An Internet Standard (which may simply be referred to as a
Standard) is characterized by a high degree of technical maturity and by a
generally held belief that the specified protocol or service provides
significant benefit to the Internet community.

Generally Internet standards cover interoperability of systems on the
internet through defining protocols, messages formats, schemas, and
languages. The most fundamental of the standards are the ones defining the
Internet Protocol.

All Internet standards are given a number in the STD series. The first
document in this series, STD 1, describes the remaining documents in the
series, and has a list of proposed standards. Often, documents in the STD
series are copies of RFCs or are a few RFCs collected together. For example,
STD 8 defines the core of the telnet protocol and comprises RFCs 854 and 855.