The IETF has a number of formal liaison relationships with other organizations. The IAB is responsible for overseeing these relationship and liaison coordination in general.

A list of the current IETF liaison relationships, and their corresponding IETF manager, as well as further information about the process of sending or receiving formal liaison statements with or without an established liaison relationship can be found on the IETF websiteLiaison page. A full list of all sent and received liaison statements can be found in theLiaison Statement tool.

If you have any questions about liaison management including sending and receiving liaison statements, you can send email to the IAB liaison coordinators atliaison-coordination@iab.org. The current liaison coordinators areSuresh Krishnan,Mirja Kühlewind,Warren Kumari, andQin Wu.

It should be noted that the number of formal liaison relationships is somewhat small, as the best way for most organizations to work with the IETF is to do so through direct technical, informal collaboration in IETF working groups.

These liaison relationships are established by the IAB when conditions warrant appointing a specific person to manage the inter-organization coordination as described inSection 2.1. of RFC 4052. Please reach out the liaison coordinators for requests to establish a new liaison relationship: liaison-coordination@iab.org.

Once the liaison relationship is established, the IAB appoints a liaison manager to act as the IETF-side point of contact.

For a few liaison relationships with organizations where there are a larger number of document dependencies, especially when specifications are developed in parallel, the IAB maintains Coordination Support Groups: currently there are groups forIEEE,3GPP, andW3C.

For more information about the procedures that govern IETF liaisons, please seeRFC 4052 “IAB Liaison Management”.

Most communication occurs between the IETF liaison manager and the partner organization directly, through theLiaison Statement tool, with the IAB performing only an oversight function. Occasionally correspondence isdirected to, orsent by, the IAB itself. Please note that if no formal established liaison relationship exists, it is still possible to send formal liaison statements as described on the IETFLiaisons page.

For more information about the procedures for sending and receiving liaison statements, please see the IETFLiaisons page andRFC 4053 (BCP 103) “Procedures for Handling Liaison Statements to and from the IETF.”