The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. It is the protocol engineering and development arm of the Internet. The IETF conducts its technical work through working groups, which are organized by topic into several development areas and are managed by Area Directors. Area directors, in turn, make up the IESG, which is responsible for both the technical management of IETF activities and the Internet standards process.
Standardization of HTTP has occurred in the IETF from its inception with strong support from the W3C. W3C team members have contributed heavily to the development of HTTP/1.1. Jim Gettys, visiting scientist at W3C from Compaq Computer Corporation, serves as HTTP/1.1 editor and co-author; Tim Berners-Lee, Director of W3C and Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, W3C HTTP Activity Lead, are co-authors of HTTP/1.1. Other co-authors include Roy Fielding of University of California at Irvine; Jeff Mogul also of Compaq; Paul Leach of Microsoft Corporation; and Larry Masinter of Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center.
The purpose of HTTP/1.1, first proposed by Roy Fielding while at ICS/University of California at Irvine, is to provide higher end-user performance while preserving the integrity and stability of the Internet using features including persistent connections, pipelining, caching, and IP address preservation. As important, the HTTP Digest Authentication mechanism, described in the accompanying HTTP Authentication specification, defines a method for authenticating a user to an HTTP server without exposing the user's passwords to potential eavesdroppers. This is an important step toward improving security on the Web.