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Meeting technology

We use a variety of technologies to support meetings which we recommend participants are familiar with to get the most from the meetings.

Meetecho participation tool

All meeting participants, both onsite and remote, need to use Meetecho in order to participate in an IETF Meeting. This is used for:

  • Watching the in-room video, remote participant video and presentations (these are also displayed on screens in sessions)
  • Accessing session materials
  • Participating in the session group chat
  • Joining the queue to speak
  • Recoding your attendance in a session
  • Responding to a poll called by the chairs.

Meetecho is WebRTC based and runs in any browser. There is a separate cut-down version that works on mobile browsers. The following guides are available:

Onsite WiFi

The IETF provides free and unfiltered WiFi in every venue that it visits and the main hotel, advertising a number of different SSIDs with different features. Please see Meeting Network Information for full details.

Webex conferencing

For some interim meetings and side meetings, we use Webex. The following guides are available:

Zulip group chat

The group chat inside Meetecho is Zulip, which is also available in dedicated desktop or mobile clients.

The IETF Zulip server (zulip.ietf.org) authenticates you using your IETF Datatracker credentials. Datatracker accounts can be created for free.

To send messages to, or view archives for, a particular stream, you must be subscribed to the stream. You can browse streams by name, which typically match the acronym for the IETF group to which it relates.

For general chat and nonspecific conversations, subscribe to the IETF Hallway stream.

Please note that all group chat message on our server are subject to the Note Well.

Online Gather community space

The IETF has a persistent online meeting space and we encourage the IETF Community to use this space to socialize or meet informally.

Please be advised that conversations in the IETF Gather are subject to the Note Well.

The space is established on the Gather.Town collaboration platform, which uses peer-to-peer WebRTC to share audio and video. Prior to joining Gather for the first time, we strongly recommend you review Gather’s documentation. Please use Chrome or Firefox as your browser (or download the Desktop app).

The persistent space can accommodate a handful of individuals at anyone time. IETF groups interested in using the space for a planned event with more participants should contact the IETF Secretariat at least a week in advance.

Need help?

If you need any help with meeting technology then please send an email to support@ietf.org.