Employ
This RFC is currently defined as BCP-9, documenting the best current practices for defining Internet standards. The actual procedures required to turn a protocol into a standard are defined here. The document notes that specifications developed through the actions of the IAB and IETF are usually revised before becoming standards. However, specifications that have been defined by outside bodies may go through the same approval process that home-grown standards do, but the outside standards are not revised. In these cases, the Internet standards process is used to affirm it as a standard and to determine how it should be applied to the Internet, rather than to modify the specification being taken.
RFC 2026 defines the Internet standard, pointing out that the specification must be stable and well understood and must be competent technically. It should also have been implemented by more than one independent group, and all those implementations should be interoperable. There should be “substantial operational experience” with the standard, and the standard should enjoy “significant public support.” Furthermore, it should be “recognizably useful in some or all parts of the Internet.”
In a perfect world, the Internet standard process would be straightforward: Someone proposes a new protocol or process, people work on it over time, the Internet community provides feedback as the standard is gradually improved until the community determines that the specification is stable, competent, interoperable, supported, and is “recognizably useful.” However, in practice, the difference between theory and practice is far greater than the difference between theory and practice, in theory. Defining Internet standards can be a messy process.