IETF-98 Highlights

Of course, with over hundred working groups, the IETF’s work program is quite diverse, and different people are interested in different topics. There is a lot that is particularly interesting for me:

New transport: I expect a lot of attention again on QUIC, the transport protocol designed to integrate functions from TCP and TLS. They are meeting Thursday at 09:00. They will use their meeting time to discuss the main protocol drafts, and issues such as details of the integration to HTTP. There will be a QUIC Tutorial on Sunday afternoon (15:00).

Coordinated Address Space Management: The CASM BOF will meet Monday 15:20 and discuss how organisations manage their address space and what possibly standardised tools may be useful in that.

Trusted Execution Environments: The A Protocol for Dynamic Trusted Execution Environment Enablement (TEEP) BOF meets Tuesday 14:50. They talk about a possible application layer security protocol that would allow configuring security credentials and software running on a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). These environments are often found in set-top boxes, smart phones, tablets, wearables, etc. Current control and configuration protocols are propietary. 

GitHub: More and more of networking software gets developed in GitHub, and it has also become a popular way for us to collaborate on the specifications themselves, with everyone having an ability make edits, raise issues, etc. We now have some experience from doing this, and the WGs Using GitHub (WUGH) BOF will discuss those experiences and find ways to work even better with GitHub. They meet Monday 17:10. There’s also a mailing list for discussing this topic.

YANG: In the Routing Area, YANG work continues to be of high interest. A Joint YANG session among four Working Groups (CCAMP, MPLS, PCE, and TEAS) will be held on Friday 09:00 to coordinate the work. Topics will include TE topology models, MPLS, PCE, Microwave Radio Link, and Transport. In the RTGWG, an update on the RTG YANG Architecture Design Team and work on-going in OpenConfig will be presented Wednesday 09:00.

Administrative matters: Changes to how the IETF is administered are also a popular discussions for the IETF community. The MTGVENUE working group is continuing our effort to define requirements that IETF meeting sites must fulfill, which seems even more important among the increasing number of travel restrictions. The IETF needs to stay as open as possible for all attendees. The group recently went through some changes. The group meets Monday 15:20. And the IASA 2.0 BOF asks whether there should be adjustments or even restructuring of the IETF administrative arrangements overall. Our arrangements have served us well, but there are also issues, and with 10+ years of experience it is time to re-assess the system. We held two workshops earlier on this topic, and the results of those workshops are outlined in an Internet-Draft. The group meets Wednesday 13:00.

New leadership: The IETF Nominations Committee (Nomcom) is charged with selecting persons for the various IETF leadership positions. The changeover is in the March meeting. For our steering group, Eric Rescorla, Adam Roach, and Warren Kumari will be starting as new Security, Applications and Real-Time, and Operations Area Directors. And I will be stepping down after four yours as chair, with Alissa Cooper continuing in that role. Please welcome the new chair and ADs! And thank you for volunteering to do this!

Running code. Last but not least, none of the above matters without software that actually does those things. Our Hackathon and Code Sprint events are open for everyone to attend, do join us and work on something that is important to you or your business! Both events start Saturday morning (09:00/09:30) before the IETF. The Code Sprint is the way that much of IETF’s own web systems and tools have come about. I want to emphasise how much we depend there both on volunteers as well as capable contractors — we need you. There are also many side events during an IETF, for instance the network operators meeting (IEPG, Sunday 10:00).

I also wanted to thank all our sponsors and supporters, and Ericsson in particular for hosting us in Chicago.

The sponsors make our meetings and IETF services possible. Thank you!

See you soon, and I wish everyone safe travels to Chicago. Hopefully the effects of various last-minute restrictions (such as the laptop ban on some flights) will remain minimal. And those participating in the meeting online — see you virtually soon!