Time to pack your bags (or fire up your remote participation engine of choice) and get ready for IETF 95! Starting on Sunday, 3 April, the Internet Engineering Task Force will be in Buenos Aires, where more than 1000 engineers will spend a week discussing the latest issues in open standards and protocols. As usual, the Internet Society is providing a ‘Rough Guide’ to the IETF via a series of blog posts on topics of mutual interest:
- DNSSEC, DANE, and DNS Security
- Routing Resilience and Security
- IPv6
- Scalability & Performance
- Trust, Identity, and Privacy
- The Internet of Things
- Strengthening the Internet
All these posts can be found, and will be archived, on our website.
Here are some of the activities that the Internet Society is involved in and some of my personal highlights.
IETF Journal
Before we get to IETF 95, catch up on some of the highlights from IETF 94 in Yokohama by reading Volume 11, Issue 3 of the IETF Journal. You can read all the articles online at https://www.internetsociety.org/publications/ietf-journal-april-2016, or pick up a hard copy in Buenos Aires. The cover article, “ The IETF Flies to South America,” explains that IETF 95 is the first time the meeting has even taken place in South America, and outlines the efforts it took to get there and what’s next for the region. We also have articles about special-use domain names, the IETF 94 Hackathon, the Internet of Things, a plea for a JSON data definition language, reports the IETF’s 30th birthday, Applied Network Research Prize winners, and the usual Chair Reports from the IETF, IAB, and IRTF Chairs.
And since we’re so excited about being in Buenos Aires, the IETF Journal is now being translated into Spanish! Get your hard copy onsite.
Jonathan B. Postel Service Award
The Postel Service Award was established by the Internet Society to honor individuals or organizations that, like Jon Postel, have made outstanding contributions in service to the data communications community. During the Wednesday night plenary, the Internet Society’s President and CEO, Kathy Brown, will discuss the award and announce when nominations open for this year’s prize.
ISOC@IETF Briefing Panel
What are the high priority issues for Internet policymakers today? Where does the work of the IETF and Public Policy intersect? What could/should be done to improve two-way dialogue between technologists and public policy officials? These are some of the questions we’ll discuss during the Internet Society Briefing Panel at IETF 95, entitled: “ Public Policy and Internet Technology Development.” The panel takes place during lunch on Tuesday, 5 April. Pre-registration is required to attend this briefing panel in person, but it will also be webcast and audiocast for remote or later viewing.
IRTF and ANRP
Through the Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP, supported by the Internet Society) the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) recognizes the best new ideas in networking, and brings them to the IETF, especially in cases where the ideas are relevant for transitioning into shipping Internet products and related standardization efforts. In Prague, two talented researchers will present during the IRTF Open Meeting on Tuesday, 5 April:
· Roya Ensafi for examining how the Chinese “great firewall” discovers hidden circumvention servers:
o Roya Ensafi, David Fifield, Philipp Winter, Nick Feamster, Nicholas Weaver, and Vern Paxson. Examining How the Great Firewall Discovers Hidden Circumvention Servers. Proc. ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), Tokyo, Japan, October 28-30, 2015.
· Zakir Durumeric for an empirical analysis of email delivery security:
o Zakir Durumeric, David Adrian, Ariana Mirian, James Kasten, Elie Bursztein, Nicolas Lidzborski, Kurt Thomas, Vijay Eranti, Michael Bailey, and J. Alex Halderman. Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor MITM… An Empirical Analysis of Email Delivery Security. Proc. ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), Tokyo, Japan, October 28-30, 2015.
Hackathon
Right before IETF 95, on 2-3 April, the IETF is holding another Hackathon to encourage developers to discuss, collaborate, and develop utilities, ideas, sample code, and solutions that show practical implementations of IETF standards. The Hackathon is free to attend, but pre-registration is required. Read our article about the last Hackathon in the IETF Journal.
Noteworthy
A major highlight of every IETF is the new work that gets started in birds-of-a-feather (BoF) sessions. Getting new work started in the IETF usually requires a BoF to discuss goals for the work, the suitability of the IETF as a venue for pursuing the work, and the level of interest in and support for the work.
Descriptions of the BoFs along with agendas, chairs, proponents, and relevant drafts are available at http://tools.ietf.org/bof/trac/.
There are seven BoFs happening in Buenos Aires:
- mtgvenue – Aims to gather community input on the process followed when selecting an IETF meeting venue
- lpwan – “Low Power Wide Area Networks” are used today to provide low-rate connectivity to vast numbers of battery-powered devices over distances that may span tens of miles. With little or no use of IETF technologies in these nets today, this meeting will evaluate their applicability.
- arcing – A number of independent naming and name resolution contexts have emerged. This BoF will contemplate the need for the IETF to describe the architectural issue and document best practices for identifying alternative resolution contexts.
- its – “Intelligent Transportation Systems” aims to standardize and/or profile IP protocols for establishing direct and secure connectivity between moving networks.
- babel – Babel is a homenet-related routing protocol. This BoF will focus on what is needed to move the Babel protocol to IETF Proposed Standard with IETF review.
- lurk – This BoF will focus on the interaction between securing content, securing communication channels, and content delivery networks
- accord – Encryption poses a challenge for cellular networks that use communication metadata to categorise sessions by their service requirements. This BoF seeks to educate about the realities of cellular networks today, and explore whether there are ways to provide signals to these networks in the presence of ubiquitous encryption.