Subject: [Int-area] Proposed Path Aware Networking RG Announcement

From: Jen Linkova <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2017 10:34:35 +1000

Hello,

(My apologies if you have seen that announcement already in some other
mailing lists).

We'll be having a first meeting of the proposed Path Aware Networking
(PAN) RG at IETF 99 in Prague next week, 13:30 Wednesday in Congress
Hall 3.
Since bringing path awareness to the endpoint has been the focus,
especially in the context of the multi homed hosts, of intarea WGs,
this RG might be of general interest to the Internet area.  Olivier
Bonaventure will give a review and overview of research to date in
this space, and Adrian Perrig will present a fully path-aware Internet
architecture, as an illustration of what is possible when
path-awareness is promoted to a first-order goal.

>From our proposed charter (https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/panrg/about):

The Internet architecture assumes a division between the end-to-end
functionality of the transport layer and the properties of the path between the
endpoints. The path is assumed to be invisible, homogeneous, singular, with
dynamics solely determined by the connectivity of the endpoints and the Internet
control plane. Endpoints have very little information about the paths over which
their traffic is carried, and no control at all beyond the destination address.

Increased diversity in access networks, and ubiquitous mobile connectivity, have
made this architecture's assumptions about paths less tenable. Multipath
protocols taking advantage of this mobile connectivity begin to show us a way
forward, though: if endpoints cannot control the path, at least they can
determine the properties of the path by choosing among paths available to them.

This research group aims to support research in bringing path awareness to
transport and application layer protocols, and to bring research in this space
to the attention of the Internet engineering and protocol design community.

The scope of work within the RG includes, but is not strictly limited to:

- communication and discovery of information about the properties of a path on
 local networks and in internetworks, exploration of trust and risk models
 associated with this information, and algorithms for path selection at
 endpoints based on this information.

- algorithms for making transport-layer scheduling decisions based on
 information about path properties.

- algorithms for reconciling path selection at endpoints with widely deployed
 routing protocols and network operations best practices.

The research group's scope overlaps with existing IETF and IRTF efforts, and
will collaborate with groups chartered to work on multipath transport protocols
(MPTCP, QUIC, TSVWG), congestion control in multiply-connected environments
(ICCRG), and alternate routing architectures (e.g. LISP), and is related to
the questions raised in the multiple recent BoF sessions that have addressed
path awareness and multiply-connected networks (e.g. SPUD, PLUS, BANANA).

The PAN(P)RG intends to meet at each IETF meeting until a
determination is made whether or not to charter it. Afterward, the RG intends to
meet at 1-3 IETF meetings per year, and hold one workshop per year, collocated
with a related academic conference.

-- 
SY, Jen Linkova aka Furry