NLnet Labs has a long history of supporting an Open Internet and Open Standards. NSD strives to be a reference implementation for emerging standards in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

The aim is to implement well-established Internet Drafts as a compile option and drafts in the final stage of open community review as an optional feature, that is disabled by default. Accepted RFCs are implemented in NSD according to the described standard.

An extensive overview of all the RFC standards and Internet drafts that have been implemented in NSD can be found in the appropriate part of the online documentation.