How standards actually get made
How the work is done
The machinery behind 3GPP and the IETF: who writes a standard, how a proposal becomes a published document, and what a release really is.
7 subjects · 21 courses · 190 chapters · 974 questions
A school for standards. 3GPP and IETF documents, the groups that write them, and the meetings where they are decided — taught in plain English, with every statement linked to the paragraph it came from.
The two bodies that decide how a phone talks to a network and how the internet carries what it says. Their documents are written for people already in the room. Here they are opened up.
How standards work at all: who writes them, how a proposal becomes a published version, what a release is. Then the groups themselves — who owns which document, and what the last meeting decided.
Every chapter ends in questions. Every course has a final test. Every question says where its answer comes from, so being wrong tells you what to read.
Nothing here is written from memory. Every statement points at a clause of the real document, a paper from the real meeting, or a number counted out of the real data — and the link opens it.
A chapter that cites a clause which does not exist never reaches the site: the build fails instead. That check is mechanical and honest about its limit. It proves a clause number is real; it cannot prove a sentence describes that clause correctly. So the clause itself is always one click away, in the document's own words.
How the work is done
The machinery behind 3GPP and the IETF: who writes a standard, how a proposal becomes a published document, and what a release really is.
One document
3GPP TS 23.501 — which functions a 5G network is made of, what each one is responsible for, and how they talk to each other.
An area of work
An area of 3GPP work that crosses a dozen groups: devices with no battery, studied in Rel-19 and specified into Rel-20. What the work is for, who did what, and where to read on.
An area of work
An area of 3GPP work that crosses the groups: using the network's own radio to detect and locate things. Studied in Rel-19, specified for Rel-20. What the work is for, who did what, and where to read on.
A working group
3GPP's radio access group and its six working groups: who owns what, how a radio feature is agreed, and how to read what they produce.
A working group
3GPP's core-network protocol group: what it owns, how it decides, and how to read what it produces.
One meeting
What a 3GPP plenary decides, how it decides it, and how to read the paper trail of any meeting yourself.