Deploy360 28 July 2014

Recovering From The Wonderful Insanity of IETF 90

By Dan YorkDirector, Internet Technology

Today is the Monday after an IETF meeting.  For those who were following our “Deploy360@IETF” and other posts last week or are following us on social media, you know how insanely busy it was for us all. Today I think many of the 1200+ “IETFers” at IETF 90 in Toronto last week are getting back to our respective offices all around the world and “decompressing” from the wonderful craziness that makes up an IETF week.

Mostly, we’re just trying to recover from the pace.  Figure out what it is we need to do next… and start doing that.

There are so many action items I wrote down.  So many articles I want to write for here on Deploy360 and on other sites.  So many Internet Drafts I want to review.  So many drafts I want to write.

It will take a while.

Right now I find myself still caught up in all that happened.  IETF 90 was an excellent event.  Extremely productive on issues around IPv6, DNSSEC, TLS, routing security … and more. Like all IETF meetings it is a study in contrasts.  The large plenary sessions seating 1,000+ people:

ietf90-plenary-450

And the smaller, more intimate working group rooms that seat far fewer:

ietf90-wes-450

It’s the long microphone lines:

IETF microphone line

… and the passionate discussions that sometimes happen at those microphones:

IETF 90 microphone discussion

It was presenting our work in one session:

Jan zorz presenting

… and sitting in one of the most ornate conference rooms I’ve ever been in (owing apparently to the history of the Fairmont Royal York):

IETF 90 ornate ballroom

It was going to completely packed sessions at 9:00am in the morning:

ietf90-dnsop-packed-450

… and being amused to find that the Terminal Room contained an actual terminal :

ietf90-terminal-450

It was smiling when I saw this slide (in an excellent presentation about calculating where to locate authoritative DNS servers for a TLD registry operator) and realizing that my own knowledge of some types of mathematics is so rusty that my brain didn’t think of this as “simple”:

simple example

… and it was laughing when I saw that some IETFer modified the Fairmont Royal York’s warning that long dresses could get caught in an escalator to be a bit more appropriate for the audience:

warning - long beards

It was getting up for 7:30am breakfast meetings and not getting back to my hotel room until 11:30pm and then realizing on Thursday evening that I hadn’t left the hotel since Tuesday evening….  and it was going for a 6:00am run with 3 other IETFers on Friday morning:

Morning run in Toronto

It was a crazy, busy … and wonderful week.  Full of all the conversations, discussions, arguments, presentations… and random meetings… that move the open Internet standards along. Full of the amazing people that make the IETF the truly amazing organization that it is – all gathered together, and attending remotely… all trying to make the Internet work better!

And now… as we all return to our homes and offices… the next step is to translate all the work that happened last week into actions over the weeks and months ahead…

 

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

Related articles

Improving Technical Security 15 March 2019

DNS Privacy Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

We previously posted about how the DNS does not inherently employ any mechanisms to provide confidentiality for DNS transactions,...

Improving Technical Security 14 March 2019

Introduction to DNS Privacy

Almost every time we use an Internet application, it starts with a DNS (Domain Name System) transaction to map...

Improving Technical Security 13 March 2019

IPv6 Security for IPv4 Engineers

It is often argued that IPv4 practices should be forgotten when deploying IPv6, as after all IPv6 is a...