What is the Applications area?

The Applications area is the part of the IETF that is supposed to deal with applications; that is, things that are not security (part of the security area), nor networks (most of the other areas), but rather things that use the networks and security services to provide things of benefit to the end-user.

Things that have to do with how things operate are often left to the Operations and Management area; things that have to do with multicasting and interactive multimedia are in the Transport area; things that have to do with defining how people would like things done usually gravitate towards the User Services area; and most efforts that involve privacy or security are handled in the Security area. A few activities that would fall into these categories are jointly managed between Applications and those other areas.

Not even all things that are left are best done in the Apps area of the IETF; however, things that work on the Internet and need to specify open protocols have tended to gravitate towards the IETF, and thence to the Applications area.

Contacting the Area Directors

Many procedures mention contacting the Area Directors. Both of them are people with full-time day jobs in addition to their IETF work, and an extremely heavy E-mail load. Therefore, don't be surprised if you don't get a reply back within a few hours!

Good guidelines for contacting us include:

• Use E-mail. It's less disruptive, more easily remembered, and more readily replied to than any other form of communication.
• Send your message to both of us. Even if one is the person you are talking to, it helps to keep the other one in the loop.
• Be brief. Short messages are more likely to be read and answered quickly.
• Plain text is more likely to be read in a timely fashion than HTML, word processor documents, or PDF. And slide presentations are unlikely to be read at all.
• Don't send us copies of internet-drafts to review; instead, just send us the names of the internet-drafts (draft-xxx-yyy-*.txt).
• If you don't get an answer immediately, wait.
  If you don't get an answer within 3-5 working days, try again; we might have started thinking about your E-mail and forgotten to reply, or might have forwarded it to someone else and forgotten to CC you.

Anyway, the two of us are:

• Chris Newman <chris.newman@sun.com>
• Lisa Dusseault <lisa@osafoundation.org>

Welcome to the Apps area!