Suggested IETF 116 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 116 meeting that will include interesting discussions. A full agenda is available on the IETF Datatracker. Additional links to session agendas will be added to this page as they are available. Standard registration for in-person and online participation is available until 13 March.

Check out the IETF 116 new participant webpage for more information about sessions specifically for new participants and other resources.

Note: All times below are in the JST (UTC+9) timezone.
The IETF Datatracker agendacan display sessions in any timezone.

SATURDAY, 25 March 2023

10:30-11:00

IETF Hackathon Kickoff (separate free registration required)
G3
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 add some more 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, 26 March 2023

10:00-12:00

Internet Engineering and Planning Group (IEPG)
G302
The IEPG, created by RFC1690,  is an informal gathering that meets on the Sunday prior to IETF meetings. The intended theme of these meetings is essentially one of 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, descriptions of real world problems, etc. This time we have presentations on “A quick look at QUIC” and “IPv6 Extension Header (Performance and Diagnostic Metrics (PDM) Destination Option) Testing Across the Internet”.

12:30-13:30

Tutorial: New Participants’ Overview
G412-413
This tutorial is an introduction to the IETF's history, purpose, and processes. While it is tailored for new participants, the information presented can be a useful refresher for anyone participating in the IETF. See the IETF 116 New Participants webpage for more information.

14:00-16:00

IETF Hackathon Results Presentations
G3
Hackathon participants brief the group about what they accomplished.

17:00-20:00

Welcome Reception
G1-G2
Come by and meet some new people! Free snacks and drinks!

18:00-20:00

HotRFC
G302
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, 27 March 2023

09:30-11:30 Monday Session I

DISPATCH
G401-G402
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.

13:00-15:00 Monday Session II

IRTF Open Meeting (irtfopen)
G401-G402
News and updates from the Internet Research Task Force, along with talks by recent Applied Networking Research Prize winners:

Boris Pismenny for his work on novel NIC offloading architectures:
Boris Pismenny, Haggai Eran, Aviad Yehezkel, Liran Liss, Adam Morrison, and Dan Tsafrir, “Autonomous NIC Offloads” Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS) 2021.

Arthur Selle Jacobs for his work on evaluating machine learning for network security:
Arthur S. Jacobs, Roman Beltiukov, Walter Willinger, Ronaldo A. Ferreira, Arpit Gupta, and Lisandro Z. Granville, “AI/ML for Network Security: The Emperor has no Clothes” Proceedings of the Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2022.

BPF/eBPF BOF
G403
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 BOF will discuss the charter of a potential working group in the IETF.

15:30-17:00 Monday Session III

Quantum Internet Research Group (qirg)
G302
The Quantum Internet Research Group (QIRG) is conducting research into new communication and remote computation capabilities including quantum secure communication, distributed quantum computing, and quantum-enhanced physical sensor systems. The Host Speaker presentation on Thursday, 30 March, will also cover topics related to quantum internetting.

Time-Variant Routing (tvr)
G412-G413
This new WG is chartered to define information and data models that address time-based, scheduled changes to a network. Time-based changes may include changes to links, adjacencies, cost, and—in some cases—traffic volumes. The models are expected to satisfy non-terrestrial networks requirements, including Low Earth Orbit (LEO) networks.

15:30-17:00 Monday Session IV

Security Dispatch (secdispatch)
G401-G402
Pitches for new security work are presented and receive community feedback on where in the IETF they could be done. 

18:00-19:00

Hackdemo Happy Hour
G304
A social gathering to highlight work accomplished during the preceding IETF Hackathon.

TUESDAY,  28 March 2023

09:30-11:30 Tuesday Session I

Information-Centric Networking Research Group (icnrg)
G317
This session will cover research on evolving the Internet infrastructure to support named data and named functions as core principles, and to explore how computation in the network can support such services.

Structured Email (sml) BOF
G303
Email remains one of the most widely used internet technologies, even in an era of increasing competition from other communication tools such as instant messaging. The goal of structured email is to replace or extend text-based email messages with message parts that describe content in a machine-readable way, enabling novel uses while retaining compatibility with existing email standards. The purpose of this BoF is to provide a space to discuss requirements, existing solutions, and to identify areas for standardization.

Operations and Management Area Working Group/OpsAREA (ops)
G403
Discussion of YANG, Intent Based Networking, packet captures, and some IoT.  

13:00-14:30 Tuesday Session II

15:00-16:00 Tuesday Session III

Transport Area Open Meeting (tsvarea)
G302
To be updated when the agenda is known.

16:30-17:30 Tuesday Session IV

RADIUS Extensions Reanimated (radextra)
G314-G315
The Radextra BoF is a recently re-opened Working Group for the Radius protocol to do some maintenance on the protocol, mostly focused on updating its cryptographic use.

Internet Area Working Group (intarea)
G401-402
To be updated when the agenda is known.

Domain Boundaries (dbound2)
G303
This BOF will discuss use-cases and previous draft problem statements considered in the previously-concluded Domain Boundaries (dbound) Working Group, which focused on developing a specification to represent differing administrative control between "related" DNS names (such as example.com and foo.example.com). Renewed interest and discussion during an informal IETF 115 side meeting led to organizing this BOF, with the intention of forming a Working Group.

WEDNESDAY, 29 March 2023

09:30-11:30 Wednesday Session I

vCon BOF
G412-413
This Birds of a Feather session will consider forming a VCON working group to define a standard container for conversation data and specify mechanisms to ensure the integrity and privacy of the data in the container.

Source Address Validation in Intra-domain and Inter-domain Networks WG (savnet)
G303
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.

Usable Formal Methods Proposed RG (ufmrg)
G412-G413
A new research group, meeting for the first time, that aims to bring together the Internet protocol standards development community and the academic research community studying formal methods of protocol specification to share experience and ideas, and to promote the use of formal methods in IETF standards.

13:00-15:00 Wednesday Session II

General Area Dispatch (gendispatch)
G403
The GENDISPATCH working group is chartered to consider proposals for new work in the GEN area, including proposals for changes or improvements to the IETF process and process documents. GENDISPATCH is chartered to identify, or to help create, an appropriate venue for new work. GENDISPATCH will not consider any technical standardization work.

Key Transparency (keytrans) BOF
G303
Key Transparency (KT) is a safe, publicly-auditable way to distribute cryptographically-sensitive data like public keys. It builds on top of previous protocols, primarily Certificate Transparency, in ways that make it more suitable for the use-case of end-to-end encryption. Importantly, users can efficiently search a KT server for only the entries that are relevant to them and check that the server responded honestly. KT servers can also better preserve their users' privacy, by controlling when or if one user is allowed to learn another user's data. This effort aims to standardize a common protocol for Key Transparency, though a Working Group is not expected to be formed.

15:30-17:00 Wednesday Session III

Computing-Aware Traffic Steering (cats)
G403
The CATS working group considers the problem of how the network edge can steer traffic between clients of a service and sites offering the service. The working group would analyze the problem in further detail and produce an architecture for a solution. Ideally, that architecture will be one that can be instantiated using existing technologies.

17:30-19:30

IETF Plenary
G1-G2
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, 30 March 2023

09:30-11:30 Thursday Session I

Global Access to the Internet for All Research Group (gaia)
G302
The GAIA research group considers Internet infrastructure development and deployment challenges, and new solutions for equitable network deployment.

11:45-12:45 

Host Speaker Series: Quantum Internet
G303
The WIDE project has been working on and supporting the research and development of quantum networking/quantum Internet for more than 15 years. We will discuss that research with particular emphasis on testbed-related activities in Japan.  The Quantum Internet Research Group (QIRG) meeting on Monday will also consider issues related to quantum internetting.

13:00-14:30 Thursday Session II

Media Over QUIC (moq)
G303
This group is working on developing a media protocol to work directly over the new QUIC transport protocol.

Measurement and Analysis for Protocols Research Group (maprg)
G401-G402
Recent research that measures what is actually happening on the Internet with IETF protocols.   

Research and Analysis of Standards-setting Processes Proposed Research Group (rasprg)
G316
The Research and Analysis of the Standard-Setting Processes Research Group (RASPRG) aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, policy makers, standards users, and standards developers to study standardization processes across SDOs, with a particular focus on Internet standard-setting in the IETF.

15:00-16:00 Thursday Session III

IAB Open Meeting
G401-402
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 time a report from the IAB e-impact workshop on Environmental Impact of Internet Applications and Systems will be presented.

17:00-18:00 Thursday Session IV

Routing Area Open Meeting (rtgarea)
G401-G402
To be updated when the agenda is known.

Security Area Open Meeting (saag)
G314-G315
To be updated when the agenda is known.

FRIDAY, 31 March 2023

09:30-11:30 Friday Session I

Secure Asset Transfer Protocol (satp)
G403
The new Secure Asset Transfer (SATP) working group is developing a standard protocol which operates between two gateways for the purpose of transferring digital assets between networks or systems. Each gateway represents one network or system, and the SAT protocol performs a unidirectional transfer of a digital asset from the origin network to a destination network.

Human Rights Protocol Considerations (hrpc)
G403
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. 

Routing Area Working Group (rtgwg)
G401-G402
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.

12:00-13:30 Friday Session II

Post-Quantum Use In Protocols (pquip)
G401-402
As Cryptographically Relevant Quantum Computers (CRQC) are increasingly contemplated, this newly-formed working group provides a standing venue to discuss post-quantum cryptography (PQC) transition issues, operational and engineering, and experiences to date relevant to work in the IETF. The working group (WG) will also provide a venue of last resort to discuss PQC-related issues in IETF protocols that have no associated maintenance WGs. A recent blog post about PQUIP provides more detail.