Two Decades of IETF Affiliations: Evolution and Impact

Standards developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) are critical to the operation of the Internet. Understanding which organisations employ or support participants in the IETF is therefore critical to understanding the development of the Internet. In this paper, we present a longitudinal analysis of affiliation changes in the period 2001-2023, covering 73,764 individuals affiliated with 6,940 organisations. We show that organisational diversity first grew, before remaining broadly constant or even declining (e.g., meeting attendance and RFC authorship). Affiliations have gradually shifted away from North America-based organisations, with an increase in European and Asian organisations. We also observe that a change in affiliation has a short-lived positive impact on participant output and engagement, and increases the chance that an RFC is published, but slows its publication.