IETF Standards-in-Practice Workshop

9 March 2026

University of Glasgow

Date

9 March 2026, 10:00-16:00 GMT

Location

Room 422/423, Sir Alwyn Williams Building, University of Glasgow, G12 8RZ

About

Open, consensus-driven technical standards are central to the security, reliability, and global interoperability of the Internet. As the Internet continues to evolve to meet the needs of emerging applications, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) remains one of the most influential venues for shaping their technical foundations.

This workshop is a hands‑on, introductory event designed to help researchers, students, and engineers understand how the IETF works, and how their own research can translate into meaningful standards contributions.

Participants will learn:

– how ideas progress through the IETF process, from early Internet‑Drafts to published RFCs

– how working groups operate and how “rough consensus” is formed

– how to navigate essential tools like the IETF Datatracker, mailing lists, and GitHub

– how research or engineering results can influence standards work

The workshop will feature talks from academics that are active within the IETF. Attendees will also map their own interests to relevant IETF working groups and leave with clear, actionable next steps for getting involved.

Organisers

The event is being organised by Dr Stephen McQuistin of University of St Andrews with support from SICSA. Please email SICSA if you have any questions.

Attendance

This workshop is free and open to anyone working in areas related to the IETF (networks, broadly speaking) and we are particularly keen in inviting students and ECRs to participate. To that end, we are able to support travel and accommodation costs for a limited number of participants. If you would like to apply for travel expense support, please complete the relevant fields on the registration form and organisers will respond as soon as possible.