IETF Community Survey 2025

In December 2025 the fifth annual IETF community survey was distributed to all ~50,000 addresses subscribed to IETF mailing lists. This survey aims to deliver three outcomes:

• A current size and demographic breakdown of the IETF community.
• Data to inform the IETF community, particularly those in leadership roles, on what are some of the key issues affecting the IETF and why sometimes asserted issues are not actually issues.
• A step in a time series of data that can be used to assess the natural changes affecting the IETF and the effectiveness of major programs, organizational changes and community/leadership actions.

Read the full report on the 2025 IETF community survey.

(Note: In previous years we have published a draft report for consultation and then final report, but as the feedback has only ever been about questions to ask for the next survey, this year we are skipping the consultation step.)

A special thanks to the 1700+ participants who responded to this survey, providing a rich data set.

The key findings section of the report is reproduced below:

Key Findings

1. The IETF continues to deliver on its core mission, with perceived importance at an all-time high

As shown in Q25 and Q30, participants rate the IETF positively across quality, relevance, transparency, consensus, and openness of standard, all within the "Good" range. The proportion of respondents giving the highest importance scores (9–10 out of 10) in Q28 has slightly increased from 2024, with 57.07% now rating the IETF at that level up from 55.40% in 2024. The IETF continues to be rated better than other Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) across every measured attribute.

2. RFC timeliness and process speed remains a persistent unresolved concern

As shown in Q25 and Q30, for the fifth consecutive year, the timeliness of RFC production scores in the "Poor" range, the only attribute to do so, and Working Group (WG) decision speed (Q27) continue to attract one of the lowest scores across all working group questions. While the speed of the standards process sits above the neutral midpoint at 3.32, indicating that most respondents do not rate the IETF as slower than other SDOs, it still receives the lowest comparative score among all attributes when benchmarking the IETF against other SDOs (Q30).The process speed has remained an area of concern over the past years.

3. Gender diversity is showing meaningful signs of progress

Regular participation among women rose from 5.42% in 2024 to 9.82% in 2025 (Q4), and first-time participation among women is now more than double that of men (Q11). The younger cohort is considerably more gender-diverse than older participants (Q4), and the overall trend is moving towards gender parity among participants, though women still make up under 10% of all respondents. Women are more represented among new participants than among regular participants.

4. Process complexity and reading volume are a hindrance for new participants

New participants rate both the time required to read documents (2.69) and the complexity of IETF processes (2.94) within the Very Poor range (Q26a), reflecting the inherent demands of joining a technically sophisticated standards body. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) score (-2.9%) for new participants remains below zero (Q20), as it has for several years.

5. Regular participants continue to find the most value in IETF participation, confirming the strength of the multi-stakeholder model

The 2025 data reflects a significant recovery in the sentiment of regular participants, with their NPS score rising sharply to 42% in 2025, up from a low of 26% in 2024 (Q20). Regular participants rate their working group experiences, process understanding, and sense of community significantly higher than all other cohorts (Q26), reporting a very strong belief that they are able to share their views (4.55) and that their contributions are valued (4.28) within working groups (Q27a). This high-value engagement remains a significant time commitment; regular participants spend a median of 6 hours per week on IETF activities (Q13), reflecting the depth of their involvement. Separately, when asked about barriers to participation, the time needed to read emails and documents is the most commonly cited hindrance across all participant types (Q26a), falling in the Poor to Very Poor range across every group.

6. Balancing extensive corporate representation with the core principle of individual contribution

For the fourth consecutive year, the statement "WG participants contribute as individuals and not as representatives of their employer" received the lowest score among working group attributes (3.39, Q27), a concern also mentioned in the open-ended feedback (Q54). However, demographically, 63.65% of the community are corporate employees (Q6), for whom representing their employer or client is one of the motivations for participation (Q12), alongside broader goals such as making the Internet work better. Despite this, the community believes that working groups consistently deliver choices based on rough consensus (4.10) and effectively address all reasonable technical concerns (3.93, Q27).

7. The new open-ended question surfaces governance and inclusion concerns

A new open-ended question (Q54), included for the first time in 2025 and only answered by 241 participants out of the 1,480 total who took the survey, surfaces five themes: behavioral barriers and lack of effective moderation, corporate capture and loss of individual voice, process inefficiency and RFC pipeline delays, access and global representation, and leadership accountability and governance reform. Importantly, the majority of the responses across all participant groups reflects genuine affection for the IETF and its mission; the concerns raised are those of invested participants who want to see the organization improve. 

Across participation levels, themes shift depending on engagement: those who only monitor and occasional participants surface access and inclusivity concerns most, while regular participants focus on behavioural barriers and governance gaps, calling specifically for term limits, performance reviews and clearer escalation paths. As for leadership experience, those who have never held a role raise all five themes with consistent emphasis and particular concern for accountability, while current leaders focus primarily on operational improvements; former leaders, meanwhile, highlight governance failures and corporate capture. Despite the breadth of concerns raised, respondents express genuine commitment to the IETF's mission.