Subject: Report from the IAB before IETF 95

From: IAB Chair <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2016 14:36:30 -0400

Dear colleagues,

This is the report to the community from the IAB about our activities
since IETF 94 (which was in Yokohama). We used to go over much of this
sort of material in the plenary sessions. Shorter time for plenary
sessions in the weekly agenda led us to try this form of report, and
it was popular. So we are continuing with it. We hope that this form
allows you to prepare topics you might want to discuss during the open
mic. But of course, if you have views you want to make known by email,
we're easy to reach: send mail to [email-masked] to
reach our public discussion list, and [email-masked] to reach just the
IAB

The IAB has a few chartered roles. We confirm the appointments to the
IESG and perform standards process oversight and handle appeals. We
also perform architectural oversight, we manage the RFC series and the
IETF's relationship with IANA, and we handle liaisons both to ISOC and
to other organizations. We try to ensure that anything we do is part
of one of these areas of responsibility, and we try to make sure these
are all covered.

Since IETF 94, here is what we've done:

    • RFC 7720, "DNS Root Name Service Protocol and Deployment
    Requirements".  This is a BCP and therefore ended up an AD
    sponsored RFC.  The purpose of this was to modernize RFC 2870 and
    take out the parts that are not really the IETF's or IAB's job.
    (External liaisons)

    • RFC 7687, "Report from the Strengthening the Internet (STRINT)
    Workshop".   More on workshops below.  (Architectural oversight)

    • RFC 7749, "The 'xml2rfc' Version 2 Vocabulary".  More about
    documents about the RFC series below.  (Manage the RFC series)

    • RFC 7754, "Technical Considerations for Internet Service
    Blocking and Filtering".  This is the sort of architectural
    analysis document that is a big part of the IAB's job.  It is fair
    to say that most of us prefer this sort of work over the
    administrative pieces. (Architectural oversight)

    • RFC 7827, "The Role of the IRTF Chair".  This is an IAB stream
    document because the IAB appoints the IRTF Chair.

    • Internet Of Things Semantic Interoperability (IOTSI) workshop.
    The IAB gratefully acknowledges the sponsorship of Ericsson in
    holding this workshop.  (Architectural oversight)

    • Comments on the ICANN CCWG-Accountability third draft report.
    (External liaison)

    • Comments on ICANN's “Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP)
    Operational Profile for gTLD Registries and Registrars”. (External
    liaison)

    • Confirmed the IESG appointments from the Nomcom, for members
    whose term will start at IETF 95. (Confirm IESG)

    • Selected Adam Roach as a new member for the RFC Series Oversight
    Committee. (Manage the RFC series)

    • Selected a new appointment to the ISOC Board of Trustees.  As of
    this writing, the new appointment hasn't been announced.  The
    IAB's selection is to be confirmed by the IESG.  (ISOC liaison)

    WELCOME TO NEW MEMBERS AND THANKS TO DEPARTING MEMBERS

The first IETF meeting of the year is when the new IAB is seated.
This also means we sometimes have to say good-bye to departing IAB
members.

This year, we wish our colleagues Mary Barnes and Marc Blanchet a fond
farewell. Mary joined the IAB in 2014 after serving from 2012 to 2014
as the IAB Executive Director. Marc joined the IAB in 2012. The IAB
and the Internet community have benefitted greatly from their insights
and service, and we thank them both.

This year, we are pleased to welcome Lee Howard and Martin Thomson. We
know that they will both bring their usual sharp observations and
vigour to the IAB's activities. We thank them for being willing to
serve the community this way, and thank the Nomcom for their
appointment.

    DOCUMENTS

The IAB has several documents in flight. Find the current list of
every IAB document in the datatracker, at
https://datatracker.ietf.org/stream/iab/. Architectural oversight
makes up an important chunk of the current documents:

draft-iab-privsec-confidentiality-mitigations-06 
    Confidentiality in the Face of Pervasive Surveillance
draft-iab-protocol-transitions-01 
    Out With the Old and In With the New: Planning for Protocol Transitions
draft-iab-rfc3677bis-00 
    IETF ISOC Board of Trustee Appointment Procedures
draft-iab-web-pki-problems-01 
    Problems with the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for the World Wide Web

Currently, there are also quite a few documents related to the planned
RFC series format change:

draft-iab-html-rfc-02 
    HyperText Markup Language Request For Comments Format
draft-iab-rfc-css-00 
    CSS Requirements for RFCs
draft-iab-rfc-framework-04 
    RFC Format Framework
draft-iab-rfc-nonascii-01 
    The Use of Non-ASCII Characters in RFCs
draft-iab-rfc-plaintext-02 
    Requirements for Plain-Text RFCs
draft-iab-rfc-use-of-pdf-01 
    PDF for an RFC Series Output Document Format
draft-iab-rfc5741bis-02 
    On RFC Streams, Headers, and Boilerplates
draft-iab-rfcv3-preptool-01 
    RFC v3 Prep Tool Description
draft-iab-svg-rfc-02 
    SVG Drawings for RFCs: SVG 1.2 RFC
draft-iab-xml2rfc-03 
    The "xml2rfc" version 3 Vocabulary

These have been out for public comment.  As we said previously, the
way these are getting handled is that they all note that they're
likely to change.  We'll publish them, then get some experience.
Later, we might find that some of our choices turn out to be less than
ideal, so we'll have a chance to adjust the final implementation.

    WORKSHOPS

As noted above, the IAB held the IOTSI workshop in March. We've
decided to continue using the mailing list for further follow-on
discussion; you can join [email-masked] at
https://www.iab.org/mailman/listinfo/iotsi.

An issue came up with this workshop that has come up before and that
we mentioned last time: workshop transparency and remote
participation.

As part of the IAB's job of architectural oversight, we try to convene
workshops to inform observations. These are usually about gaps or
issues we see, in an effort to draw attention to those things from the
wider IETF community. Workshops of this sort work best when the group
is somewhat small and informal, because that tends to encourage
informal discussion and easy exploration of the issues.

But of course, the IAB is often not the only group that notices the
issues or gaps, and others often want to participate. Some people
can't make the trip to a workshop; others just want to follow along.
Yet the necessary style to support remote participation is probably
more formal and presentation-oriented than may always be good.

The IAB's current policies about this are reflected in a note we
posted at
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/architecture-discuss/Vns0-GWYOHqP9wq7uic0DS331co.
The short version is that we are not going to commit to remote
participation generally, but it will be something we ask workshop
organizers to consider in designing workshops. Please have a look at
the full posting for all the considerations on this topic.

    PROGRAMS

The IAB organizes its work, for the most part, into programs.  There
are basically two classes: management programs and architectural
programs.  The former are how we handle the oversight of various
things, and the latter are where we do architectural work.  The former
are expected to last as long as the IAB continues to have that
oversight function; the latter last until the IAB has come to a
conclusion on the relevant group of topics, and we expect them to wind
down afterwards.

Since IETF 94, we have taken to reviewing the programs as part of our
regular teleconferences. The goal is to perform one review of every
program between every IETF meeting, though that won't always be
possible. We'd noticed that program reviews were too infrequent
(historically, just once a year, at the IAB retreat). More regular
review allows us to adjust program priorities and membership more
often, and we hope that it will ensure that programs remain vital (or
else close down). Minutes of the reviews appear in the regular IAB
meeting minutes, which you can find at
https://www.iab.org/documents/minutes/. Every program has an
associated discussion list where topics relevant to the program can be
discussed by anyone who wants to join. You can find the lists at
https://www.iab.org/iab-mailing-lists/.

Management programs:
    IANA Evolution    
    IETF Protocol Registries Oversight Committee (IPROC, with IAOC)

            These programs have been attending to the anticipated
            change to the IANA's relationship to the US Government.
            The former of these is responsible to keep track of the
            IETF's use of IANA, and the latter ensures that the IANA
            Memorandum of Understanding with ICANN is administered
            effectively.  Participants in this area have been,
            perhaps unfortunately, extremely busy as a result of the
            IANA changes. IPROC was reviewed on 2016-01-27 and IANA
            oversight was reviewed on 2016-02-10.
            
    Liaison Oversight

            Reviewed on 2016-03-23.

    RFC Editor (includes RSOC)

            This program has of course been at the centre of the RFC
            series format changes; it was reviewed 2016-02-24.

Architectural issues:
    Emergency Services

            Reviewed 2016-02-03, closed as of 2016-04-03

    Internationalization

            This program is up for review soon.  At a previous
            technical plenary we had some discussion of the state of
            affairs with internationalization, and there is still
            reason to be concerned that this topic is in serious
            trouble around the IETF.  

    IP Stack Evolution

            Reviewed 2016-03-02

    Names and Identifiers

            The Names and Identifiers program has not been reviewed
            yet (it is up next), but it has been generating quite a
            bit of discussion on [email-masked].  The arcing BoF
            at IETF 95 was inspired in part by some of those discussions.  

    Privacy and Security
    
            Reviewed 2016-01-13.

    INTERNET RESEARCH TASK FORCE

The IAB appoints the IRTF Chair. Lars Eggert, the current IRTF Chair,
has announced that he will not seek re-appointment, having served
since March of 2011. The IAB is starting its search for a new Chair.
We are grateful for Lars's tremendous service in this role, and we'll
have our work cut out for us. We will be making announcements soon
about our search, so look for those. In the meantime, if you are
interested or know someone who you think might be a good candidate,
have a look at RFC 7827 to see what the job entails.

Respectfully submitted,
Andrew Sullivan
For the IAB

-- 
IAB Chair (Andrew Sullivan)
[email-masked]