During a meeting

At IETF meeting a number of meetings take place that are of general interest.

The IETF plenary is where general administrative reporting takes place and where discussions are being held that are important to the whole community, e.g., about how the IETF governs itself.

The IAB Open Meeting is where the Internet Architecture board presents what it is doing. Usually, it includes discussions of topics about the Internet Architecture and an update on liaisons. The latter is interesting as it provides an insight as to how the IETF relates to other SDOs and technical bodies.

The Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) Open Meeting is where research topics are presented and progress in research groups is reported, it also features presentations of the Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP) winners.

The Internet Engineering Protocol Group (IEPG), a meeting usually taking place on Sunday, features somewhat more operational presentations of “topical interest”. The presentations are technical but usually give an indication about the topics that are interesting to the Internet technical infrastructure’s operational community.

Further, the Tutorial: New Participants’ Overview is relevant for newcommers while during the Hot RFC session participants try to pitch their documents to make sure interested parties join sessions later in the week.

Finally, the Technology Deep Dive is a mini masterclass for the technical IETF audience on a specific topic.