Suggested IETF 118 Sessions for Getting Familiar with New Topics

If you are a new IETF participant, or if you are an experienced participant that would like to get familiar with a new topic, there were many sessions at the IETF 118 meeting that included interesting discussions. The final agenda is available on the IETF Datatracker.

Check out the new participant webpage for more information about sessions specifically for new participants.

See the IETF Live webpage to view select sessions from the IETF Hackathon and meeting.

This page was last updated on 10 November 2023. More new topics are set for the the IETF 119 Brisbane meeting 16-22 March 2024.

Note: All times are in the Central European Time (CET) timezone (UTC +1 hours).

SATURDAY, 4 November 2023

09:30-20:30

IETF Hackathon Kickoff (separate free registration required)
Ballroom
The IETF Hackathon is an event where participants develop and test that their code can interoperate with others, or where new code is written, often to implement recent IETF work. The kickoff meeting describes all the projects that will go on this week; they are also already listed on the Hackathon wiki. Feel free to join an existing team to squash some bugs! You do not need to bring code; you can simply join a topic of interest and contribute to existing code, help with testing or in many other ways.

SUNDAY, 5 November 2023

10:00-12:00

Internet Engineering and Planning Group (iepg)
Congress Hall 3
The IEPG, created by RFC 1690, is an informal gathering that meets on the Sunday prior to IETF meetings. These meetings focus on operational relevance in some form or fashion—although the chairs will readily admit that they will run with an agenda of whatever is on offer at the time! Ideally it covers operational and deployment reports, and descriptions of real world problems.

12:30-13:30
Tutorial: New Participants’ Overview
Berlin 1/2
This tutorial provides the key information you need to get started in the IETF, including its structure, processes, and resources. Check out the new participant webpage for more information.

14:00-16:00
Hackathon Results Presentations
Ballroom
Hackathon participants brief the group about what they accomplished.

16:00-17:00
New Participants' Quick Connections
Liben 3
The Quick Connections is a simple and effective way for you to be introduced to a variety of experienced IETF attendees — often working group (WG) chairs — who can help you get more involved in your areas of interest. Pre-registration is required and available on your attendee dashboard after you have registered for the IETF 118 meeting.

17:00-20:00

Welcome Reception
Congress Hall 1/2
Come by and meet some new people! Free snacks and drinks!

18:00-20:00

HotRFC Lightning Talks
Congress Hall 3
See rapid-fire presentations about new standards work or new research topics, updates on cross-area IETF work and relevant technologies, and industry advances that could affect IETF participants.

MONDAY, 6 November 2023

09:30-11:30 Monday Session I

DISPATCH
Congress Hall 2
This meeting accepts proposals for new work in the Applications and Real Time (ART) Area and determines the best venue in which to do the work. The work usually has low barriers to understanding and participation.

Human Rights Protocol Considerations (hrpc)
Bohemia 1/2/3
This research group aims to explore the relations between Internet architecture and human rights, and to discuss how human rights and public interest policy are considered in the development of the Internet. 

13:00-15:00 Monday Session II

BPF/eBPF
Ballroom
eBPF (which is no longer an acronym for anything), also commonly referred to as BPF, is a technology with origins in the Linux kernel that can run sandboxed programs in a privileged context such as the operating system kernel. This will be the second meeting of the working group.

Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers (dult) BOF
Congress Hall 1
This session will build on discussions during the IETF 117 BOF regarding a  proposal to establish best practices and protocols for accessory manufacturers whose products have built-in location-tracking capabilities.  By following these requirements and recommendations, a location-tracking accessory will be compatible with unwanted tracking detection and alerts on mobile platforms. This is an important capability for improving the privacy and safety of individuals in the circumstance that those accessories are used to track their location without their knowledge or consent.

15:30-17:00 Monday Session III

Security Dispatch (secdispatch)
Congress Hall 2

Pitches for new security work are presented and receive community feedback on where in the IETF they could be done. 

18:30-19:30

Hackdemo Happy Hour
Ballroom Foyer
A social gathering to highlight work accomplished during the preceding IETF Hackathon.

19:00-21:00 

New Participants’ Dinner (Open to new participants only)
This dinner is a chance to meet other newcomers to IETF meetings Organized by Secretariat. Please note that pre-registration is required, and a US$15 fee will be charged. More information is available on the New Participants webpage.

TUESDAY,  7 November 2023

09:30-11:30 Tuesday Session I

11:45-12:45 Tuesday Break Session

Environmental Impacts of Internet Technology (e-impact)
Congress Hall 3
This is a meeting related to the IAB E-Impact Program, which is a venue for discussing environmental impacts and sustainability of Internet technology. Within this scope, the program looks at trends, issues, improvement opportunities, ideas, best practices, and subsequent direction of work related to Internet technology, architecture, and operations, including visibility and efficiency on energy and other environmentally-impacting attributes. In particular, the group focuses on Internet architecture's role in these topics.

Secure Patterns for Internet CrEdentials (spice) BOF
Congress Hall 3
Digital credentials based on IETF standards have use cases ranging from personal credentials, such as drivers licenses and vaccination proofs, to business-to-business or business-to-government applications. These use cases benefit from using CBOR encoding to achieve compactness and leveraging COSE’s cryptographic agility to achieve interoperability. There is a need to more clearly document verifiable credentials that utilize the issuer, holder, and verifier (three role) model across the work of various standards development organizations, including the  IETF, ISO, W3C, and others. The proposed SPICE WG would document digital credential formats based on existing IETF standards, and extend them to support stakeholders that are building compliance and automation systems based on industry adopted cryptography and protocols. This work would be coordinated closely with other working groups developing JSON-based credentials to ensure architectural alignment. 

13:00-15:00 Tuesday Session II

Workload Identity in Multi System Environments (wimse) BOF
Congress Hall 1
Secure workload identity is a foundational problem in cloud environments, and the applications built on top of such systems. While technologies like SPIFFE help solve workload identities, and technologies like OAuth help solve access rights, there are many open questions about where the overlaps and gaps are in this space. Identity for workloads, software stacks, transactions, users, authorities, and other entities can all have a part to play in determining the rights associated with a request and its response. After several informal discussions during IETF 117, this BOF session will provide further opportunity to discuss the topic further and consider use cases. It is not intended to form a working group.

15:30-16:30 Tuesday Session III

IAB Open Meeting
Congress Hall 2
In this session, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) provides a more detailed update on their technical programs, workshops, and current work-in-process architectural guidance documents, and seeks community input. This session will also feature an invited talk on nation-state threats by Sandra Elvin from Microsoft.

WEDNESDAY, 8 November 2023

09:30-11:30 Wednesday Session I

General Area Open Meeting (genarea)
Ballroom
This meeting of the General Areas discusses various issues related to IETF processes.

Measurement and Analysis for Protocols Research Group (maprg)
Congress Hall 2
Recent research that measures what is actually happening on the Internet with IETF protocols.   

13:00-14:00 Wednesday Session II

Operations and Management Area Working Group/OpsAREA
Congress Hall 1
Discussion of YANG, Intent Based Networking, packet captures, and some IoT. 

Transport Area Open Meeting (tsvarea)
Congress Hall 2
Francesca Palombini will give a brief overview of ongoing work in groups adjacent to HTTP. 

17:00-19:00

IETF Plenary
Congress Hall 1/2
The plenary is the one meeting addressed to the entire IETF community. There are leadership reports about the state of the IETF, as well as “open mic” sessions for community feedback on a broad range of topics.  

THURSDAY, 9 November 2023

09:30-11:30 Thursday Session I

13:00-14:30 Thursday Session II

Network Inventory Yang (ivy)
Continental 8-9
This working group is meeting for the first time to  to provide a venue for discussion of inventory YANG models from across IETF Areas under a common umbrella to facilitate distribution of the work, clarify the scope of each model, and minimize overlap between them. The Working Group may also dispatch some inventory work towards Working Groups in the Operations and Management Area as well as other Areas, if appropriate.

Source Address Validation in Intra-domain and Inter-domain Networks WG (savnet)
Continental 4
A relatively new WG chartered to define routing-protocol-independent architectures and procedures to accurately determine the valid incoming interfaces and perform source address validation.

15:00-16:30 Thursday Session III

17:00-18:30 Thursday Session IV

IRTF Open Meeting (irtfopen)
Congress Hall 1
News and updates from the Internet Research Task Force, along with talks by recent Applied Networking Research Prize winners.

Routing Area Working Group (rtgwg)
Congress Hall 3
This session is a venue to discuss, evaluate, support, and develop proposals for new work in the Routing Area. This working group also works on fast-reroute, YANG models, and other general routing topics.

Security Area Open Meeting (saag)
Berlin 1/2
To be updated when the agenda is known.

FRIDAY, 10 November 2023

09:30-11:30 Friday Session I

Key Transparency (keytrans)
Ballroom
Public keys used to provide end-to-end encrypted communication services are often authenticated solely by the assertion of the communications service provider (e.g., video conferencing or instant messaging service providers). As a result, the underlying encryption protocols are left vulnerable to eavesdropping and impersonation by a service provider which distributes malicious public keys. To provide confidence to their users and to mitigate this attack, end-to-end encrypted communication service providers are increasingly looking to an authentication service to provide verifiability for identity-to-public-key bindings in the context of their service. This will be the first meeting of the working group.