Rough Guide to IETF 100 – Slinging Standards in Singapore Thumbnail
IETF 6 November 2017

Rough Guide to IETF 100 – Slinging Standards in Singapore

By Olaf KolkmanPrincipal - Internet Technology, Policy, and Advocacy

It’s time for the third and final IETF meeting of 2017. Starting on Sunday, 12 November, the Internet Engineering Task Force will be in Singapore for IETF 100, where about 1000 engineers will discuss the latest issues in open internet standards and protocols. All this week, we’re providing our usual Internet Society Rough Guide to the IETF via a series of blog posts on topics of mutual interest:

  • Internet of Things (IoT)
  • Routing Infrastructure Security Resilience
  • IPv6
  • DNSSEC, DANE and DNS Security
  • Identity, Privacy, and Encryption

All these posts can be found on our blog and will be archived through our Rough Guide to IETF 100 overview page.

Here are some of the activities that the Internet Society is involved in and some of my personal highlights.

IETF Journal

Catch up on highlights from IETF 99 in Prague by reading the IETF Journal. You can read all the articles online at https://www.ietfjournal.org, or pick up a hardcopy in Singapore.

This issue marks the final hardcopy version; starting in 2018, we’ll be shifting our focus to longer-form articles online and via our Twitter and Facebook channels. In the meantime, this issue has articles on the Human Rights Protocol Considerations Research Group, the latest security updates to Network Time Protocol, new email-related Working Groups JMAP and EXTRA, as well as the important coding work that took place as part of the IETF Hackathon. Our regular columns from the IETF, IAB, and IRTF chairs, coverage of the Birds-of-a-Feather meetings, and presentations from the Applied Networking Research Prize winners wrap up the issue.

Want to write for the Journal? Email us at [email protected].

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. Six submissions were awarded prizes in 2017. Two winners will present their work at the IRTF Open Meeting on Thursday, 16 November at 9:30AM.

  • Paul Emmerich, a research associate at the Technical University of Munich. Emmerich will present his work to develop the high-speed packet generator, MoonGen.
  • Roland van Rijswijk-Deij, a researcher at the Centre for Telematics and Information Technology (CTIT) at the University of Twente. Van Rijswijk-Deij will present his analysis of the impact of elliptic curve cryptography on DNSSEC validation performance.

Other Research Activities

Another effort to connect the research and standardization communities involves both the IETF and the Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium. Two areas with active working groups at IETF 100, IoT Security and DNS Privacy, are planning for workshops to be held in conjunction with NDSS 2018. Both the Decentralized IoT Security and Standards (DISS) workshop and DNS Privacy: Increasing Usablility and Decreasing Traceability (DNSPRIV) workshop are currently accepting paper submissions and planning for productive workshops in February 2018. 

Hackathon

Right before IETF 99, 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 has limited seats available.

Technologies from past Hackathons include DNS, HTTP 2.0, NETVC, OpenDaylight, ONOS, VPP/FD.io, RiOT, SFC, TLS 1.3, WebRTC, YANG/NETCONF/RESTCONF. Details on all planned technologies will be listed on the IETF 100 Meeting Wiki.

Technical Plenary

One of the week’s highlights is always the technical plenary. We don’t have the specific topic yet, but we know it will take place on Wednesday, 15 November, from 17:10-19:40 and you should be there to hear the talk.

Jonathan Postel Award

The Postel Award was established by the Internet Society to honor individuals or organizations that, like Jonathan Postel, have made outstanding contributions in service to the data communications community. The award is focused on sustained and substantial technical contributions, service to the community, and leadership. The Award Ceremony will take place on Wednesday, 15 November during the IETF Plenary.

Birds of a Feather (BoF) Sessions

Another 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. There are four BoFs happening in Singapore:

  • Software Updates for Internet of Things (suit)
    Monday, 13 November, 15:50-17:20
    Aims to standardize a secure firmware update mechanism that is suitable for constrained devices.
  • IASA 2.0 (iasa20)
    Tuesday, 14 November, 13:30-15:00
    Reviews and possibly rework administrative arrangements at the IETF.
  • Trusted Execution Environment Provisioning (teep)
    Wednesday, 15 November, 13:30-15:00
    Aims to develop an application layer protocol providing Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) with lifecycle management of trusted applications, and security domain management.
  • Data Center Routing (dcrouting)
    Wednesday, 15 November, 09:30-12:00
    Discusses issues, requirements, and solutions for routing in the data center.

Follow Us

A lot is going on in Singapore, and whether you plan to be there or join remotely, there’s much to monitor. To follow along as we dole out this series of Rough Guide to IETF blog posts, follow us on the Internet Society blog, Twitter, Facebook, or see https://www.internetsociety.org/events/ietf/ietf-100/.

Disclaimer: Viewpoints expressed in this post are those of the author and may or may not reflect official Internet Society positions.

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