o  These procedures provide a great deal of flexibility to adapt to
      the wide variety of circumstances that occur in the
      standardization process.  Experience has shown this flexibility to
      be vital in achieving the goals listed above.

   The goal of technical competence, the requirement for prior
   implementation and testing, and the need to allow all interested
   parties to comment all require significant time and effort.  On the
   other hand, today's rapid development of networking technology
   demands timely development of standards.  The Internet Standards
   Process is intended to balance these conflicting goals.  The process
   is believed to be as short and simple as possible without sacrificing
   technical excellence, thorough testing before adoption of a standard,
   or openness and fairness.

   From its inception, the Internet has been, and is expected to remain,
   an evolving system whose participants regularly factor new
   requirements and technology into its design and implementation. Users
   of the Internet and providers of the equipment, software, and
   services that support it should anticipate and embrace this evolution
   as a major tenet of Internet philosophy.




 
RFC 2026               Internet Standards Process           October 1996


   The procedures described in this document are the result of a number
   of years of evolution, driven both by the needs of the growing and
   increasingly diverse Internet community, and by experience.

















































 
RFC 2026               Internet Standards Process           October 1996


1.3  Organization of This Document

   Section 2 describes the publications and archives of the Internet
   Standards Process.  Section 3 describes the types of Internet
   standard specifications.  Section 4 describes the Internet standards
   specifications track.  Section 5 describes Best Current Practice
   RFCs.  Section 6 describes the process and rules for Internet
   standardization.  Section 7 specifies the way in which externally-
   sponsored specifications and practices, developed and controlled by
   other standards bodies or by others, are handled within the Internet
   Standards Process.  Section 8 describes the requirements for notices
   and record keeping  Section 9 defines a variance process to allow
   one-time exceptions to some of the requirements in this document
   Section 10 presents the rules that are required to protect