Suggested IETF 120 Sessions for Getting Familiar with New Topics

If you are a new IETF participant, or if you are an experienced participant who would like to get familiar with a new topic, there are many sessions at the IETF 120 Vancouver meeting that will include interesting discussions. A final agenda is available on the IETF Datatracker. Additional information about and links to session agendas will be added to this page as they are available. 

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

This post will be updated as more information for IETF 120 is available.

Note: All times are in the Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) timezone (UTC -7 hours).

SATURDAY, 20 July 2024

10:30-11:00

IETF Hackathon Kickoff (separate free registration required)
Regency D/E
The IETF Hackathon is a two-day 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, 21 July 2024

10:00-12:00

Internet Engineering and Planning Group (IEPG)
Georgia B
The IEPG 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
Georgia B
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
Regency D/E/F

IETF Hackathon participants brief the group about what they accomplished.

16:00-17:00
New Participants' Quick Connections
Plaza C
The Quick Connections is a simple and effective way for new participants 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 120 meeting.

17:15-19:00

Welcome Reception
Regency A/B/C
This is the official opening session of the IETF meeting week. Come by and meet some new people with free snacks and drinks.

18:00-20:00

HotRFC Lightning Talks
Georgia A
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, 22 July 2024

09:30-11:30 Monday Session I

ALLDISPATCH
Regency C/D
This is a new type of session that discusses proposals for new work in all IETF Areas, and aims to make a recommendation about the best venue in which to do the work. For IETF 120, this ALLDISPATCH session combines topics covered at DISPATCH, SECDISPATCH, and GENDISPATCH at previous IETF meetings. The session agenda provides further structure for the session. The work being discussed usually has low barriers to understanding and participation.

13:00-15:00 Monday Session II

IRTF Open Meeting (irtfopen)
Regency A/B
News and updates from the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), along with talks by recent Applied Networking Research Prize winners Xieyang Xu, for his work on improving test coverage for network configurations, Yevheniya Nosyk, for her work on understsnding root causes of DNS resolution failures, and Harjasleen Malvai, for her work on key transparency for encrypted messaging.

Routing Area Working Group (rtgwg)
Regency E
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.

15:30-17:00 Monday Session III

17:30-18:30 Monday Session IV

18:30-19:30

Hackdemo Happy Hour
Regency Hallway
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,  23 July 2024

09:30-11:30 Tuesday Session I

ACM/IRTF Applied Networking Research Workshop (anrw)
Regency E
The ACM, IRTF & Internet Society Applied Networking Research Workshops (ANRW) are day-long events that provide a forum for researchers, vendors, network operators and the Internet standards community to present and discuss emerging results in applied networking research. This session will include: Welcome, Keynote, and Measurements. NOTE: Separate registration is required; see the webpage for registration details.

Operations and Management Area Working Group (opsawg)
Plaza B

Secure Communication of Network Properties (sconepro) BoF
Regency C/D
This BoF session will consider forming a working group around discussions about how both network operators and application providers, particularly of video-based applications, might benefit from the ability to signal network attributes to the application so it can adapt.

13:00-15:00 Tuesday Session II

ACM/IRTF Applied Networking Research Workshop (anrw)
Regency E
The ACM, IRTF & Internet Society Applied Networking Research Workshops (ANRW) are day-long events that provide a forum for researchers, vendors, network operators and the Internet standards community to present and discuss emerging results in applied networking research. This session will include: Routing and Congestion. NOTE: Separate registration is required; see the webpage for registration details.

15:30-17:00 Tuesday Session III

ACM/IRTF Applied Networking Research Workshop (anrw)
Regency E
The ACM, IRTF & Internet Society Applied Networking Research Workshops (ANRW) are day-long events that provide a forum for researchers, vendors, network operators and the Internet standards community to present and discuss emerging results in applied networking research. This session will include: Security and Energy. NOTE: Separate registration is required; see the webpage for registration details.

17:30-18:30 Tuesday Session IV

Applications and Real-Time Area Open Meeting (artarea)
Regency C/D

ACM/IRTF Applied Networking Research Workshop (anrw)
Regency E
The ACM, IRTF & Internet Society Applied Networking Research Workshops (ANRW) are day-long events that provide a forum for researchers, vendors, network operators and the Internet standards community to present and discuss emerging results in applied networking research. This session will include: Lightning Papers. NOTE: Separate registration is required; see the webpage for registration details.

WEDNESDAY, 24 July 2024

09:30-11:30 Wednesday Session I

Digital Emblems (diem) BoF
Regency C/D
This session will explore potential work to develop digital emblems that augment physical emblems (such as the “Press” emblems on battlefields). This BoF is not intended to be working group-forming, nor to be a venue for discussing perspectives on the legal, regulatory, or policy aspects surrounding the topic of digital emblems. The technical challenges in this space cross multiple areas within the IETF and input is needed from technology, policy, and legal expertise without delving into subjective aspects around those areas.

13:00-15:00 Wednesday Session II

Getting Ready for Energy-Efficient Networking (green) BoF
Regency C/D
This BoF session is intended to discuss desires to improve energy efficiency; to understand energy consumption by different links, nodes, and devices/components within a network; and to determine whether there is a community of interest to work on these topics within the IETF through a new working group (provisionally called GREEN).

Congestion Control Working Group (ccwg)
Regency A
This working group is close to completing its first deliverable, updating the requirements for new congestion controls to reflect the reality of how they are developed and deployed today. The Working Group will discuss the possibility of new work items related to congestion control algorithm standardization, and/or publishing new Best Common Practice RFCs.

15:30-17:00 Wednesday Session III

Internet Area Working Group (intarea)
Georgia B

17:30-19:30

IETF Plenary
Regency A/B/C/D
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, 25 July 2024

09:30-11:30 Thursday Session I

Network Attestation for Secure Routing (nasr) BoF
Regency E/F
The goal of this Bof is to discuss challenges associated with routing data on top of trusted devices, trusted operating environments, trusted links and trusted services only, so as to achieve transparent and predictable forwarding behavior.

13:00-14:30 Thursday Session II

IAB Open Meeting (iabopen)
Regency C/D
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.

Crypto Forum (cfrg)
Regency E/F

The Crypto Forum Research Group considers cryptographic protocols, primitives and their parameters that are useful for IETF work. Current CFRG work is focused on signature schemes with specific properties, AEAD mechanisms, Password Authenticated Key Establishment (PAKE) and multi-party computation (MPC) protocols, as well as general questions (guidelines for writing cryptography specifications) and implementation guidance documents.

15:00-16:30 Thursday Session III

Security Area Open Meeting (saag)
Regency C/D

17:00-18:00 Thursday Session IV

18:30-19:30 Thursday Session V

19:00-21:00 

New Participants’ Social Hour (Open to new participants only)
Grouse

This gathering is a great opportunity for new participants to share their experiences and discuss topics of interest with IETF leadership. More information is available on the New Participants webpage.

FRIDAY, 26 July 2024

09:30-11:30 Friday Session I

13:00-15:00 Friday Session II

Internet Congestion Control Research Group (iccrg)
Georgia B
The ICCRG and the Congestion Control Working Group (see Wednesday Session II) will be talking about various approaches to improve congestion control. Congestion control—sending enough data to get good performance while avoiding overloading the network path or filling buffers in the network—is important to overall network performance. Better congestion control can help improve application performance as well as latency under load. There is increasing energy around and interest in congestion control in both the IETF and IRTF, and various proposals in this space are being discussed.

15:30-17:00 Friday Session III

17:15-18:15

Farewell Reception
Regency C
This informal gathering is an opportunity to reconnect with and say so long to fellow participants met during the week.