Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. External Data Representation (XDR) is an IETF standard from 1995. It allows data to be wrapped in an architecture independent manner so data can be transferred between heterogeneous computer systems. Converting from the local representation to XDR is called encoding. Converting from XDR to the local representation is called decoding. XDR is implemented as a software library of functions that is portable between different operating systems and is also independent of the transport layer. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) develops and promotes Internet standards, cooperating closely with the W3C and ISO/IEC standards bodies and dealing in particular with standards of the TCP/IP and Internet protocol suite. It is an open standards organization, with no formal membership or membership requirements. All participants and managers are volunteers, though their work is usually funded by their employers or sponsors; for instance, the current chairperson is funded by VeriSign and the U.S. government's National Security Agency.