About the BoFs at IETF 121
- StandardsInternet Standards Observatory (ISTO)
In a previous blog post on the Standards Observatory, we discussed what Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions are and why they are important to the IETF. There are five BoFs scheduled at the upcoming IETF 121 meeting. This post looks at each of the BoFs with a preview of what to expect in Dublin.
What Happened at the previous, IETF 120 BoFs?
There were five BoFs at the Vancouver IETF 120.
alldispatch
While not really a BoF, alldispatch had its second session in Vancouver. The second session was much more successful than the first and was notable for the number of proposals for changes in the way the IETF (and, IANA) operate. The IESG has elected to continue with the alldispatch "experiment" in Dublin - see below
sconepro
The Standard Communication with Network Elements BoF became a full working group after the Vancouver meeting. You can see the Datatracker page for the new working group here.
diem
The digital emblems BoF met in Vancouver and is meeting again in Dublin. You can see more about the second digital emblems BoF [below](#diem "The DIEM BoF at Dublin IETF 121").
green
Getting Ready for Energy-Efficient Networking was a BoF in Vancouver and became a full working group after IETF 120. You can see the Datatracker for the new working group here.
nasr
The network attestation for secure routing BoF took place in Vancouver, but a scheduled interim meeting (to be held after Vancouver) was cancelled. Instead, the group interested in nasr is having a side meeting on Monday, November 4 from 7:00pm to 8:00pm in room WMR4 in Dublin.
BoFs at the Dublin (IETF 121) IETF meeting
The current agenda for the IETF 120 meeting to be held in Dublin in November 2024 includes five agenda items listed as BoFs:
- hpwan - High Performance Wide Area Network - Monday, November 4 from 1:00pm to 3:00pm
- alldispatch - not really a BoF - Monday, November 4 from 3:30pm - 5:00pm
- diem - Digital Emblems - Tuesday, November 5 from 9:30am - 11:30am
- rpp - RESTful Provisioning Protocol - Wednesday, November 6 from 9:30am - 11:30am
- deepspace - Deepspace - Thursday, November 7 from 1:00pm - 3:00pm
hpwan
The High Performance Wide Area Networking BoF emerged from a side meeting held at the Vancouver IETF 120 meeting. The meeting at IETF 121 is a non-Working Group forming meeting with the intention to bring together interested parties who would like to work on networks that are engineered for high-speed, low-latency, and ultra-high-volume applications in environments such as research, academia, and large-scale data processing.
According to the BoF proposal: "The thrust of the BoF will be to bring together interested parties, including those operating R&E infrastructures, to discuss existing practices, what works, what does not work. The output of the BoF would be to document requirements for such infrastructures, and then identify potential avenues for IETF work to improve transport protocols to make large-scale data transfers more effective over wide-area, high RTT, potentially lossy paths, where the physical (inter-continental) infrastructure may be shared between multiple research and science communities."
hpwan already has four Internet Drafts under discussion on its mailing list:
draft-zhao-hpwan-scenarios-deployment-00 - Scenarios and Deployment Considerations for High Performance Wide Area Network
draft-yy-hpwan-transport-gap-analysis-00 - Gap analysis of transport protocols of high performance wide area network
draft-xiong-hpwan-uc-req-problem-00 - Use Cases, Requirements and Problems for High Performance Wide Area Network
draft-kcrh-hpwan-state-of-art-00 - Current State of the Art for High Performance Wide Area Networks
hpwan chairs
Gorry Fairhurst, Tim Chown
hpwan at IETF 121
The agenda for the hpwan session at IETF 121 is available here. The meeting materials are available here.
The agenda for hpwan is:
- Chairs: Introduction. Note Well, Agenda
- Chairs: Goals of the BoF & definition of HP WAN
- Presentation: High-Volume Content Mover
- Presentation: R&E Operator
- Presentation: Public Operator with HP-WAN Applications
- Presentation: State of the Art Congestion Control and Related Technologies
- Presentation: Open Technical Issues
- Open Discussion
- Chairs: Conclusions and Next Steps
hpwan links
- hpwan Datatracker page is https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/hpwan/about/.
- Mailing list archive for hp-wan@ietf.org is here.
- hpwan IETF 121 meeting materials are here.
- alldispatch IETF 121 is currently scheduled for Monday, November 4 from 1:00pm - 3:00pm (subject to change).
alldispatch
alldispatch is a BoF in the general area which does not adopt drafts, but instead provides a direction for the authors of a draft to ensure that the draft gets further consideration at the IETF. The IESG describes alldispatch as an experiment, but it difficult to imagine how the IESG will retreat from having alldispatch sessions. It's also difficult to understand why these sessions are still characterized as a BoF and not simply part of the regular work in the General Area of the IETF.
The first such BoF, held at IETF 119. was not a roaring success because authors (and other participants) tried to discuss the substance of their proposals rather than where in the IETF they should go. The second all dispatch at IETF 120 in Vancouver was notable for the number of proposals that were about IETF operations and procedures rather than protocol development. The alldispatch session was meant to be IETF-wide and not specific to any particular area in the IETF. The six results that are possible after a discussion in all dispatch are:
1. Direct the work to an existing WG
2. Propose a new focused WG
3. Recommendation to hold a full BOF
4. Publish as AD-sponsored (assuming AD is willing)
5. Additional discussion or community development required (e.g., with a new non-WG mailing list)
6. Work is not appropriate for IETF
alldispatch Chairs
- Jim Fenton, Rifaat Shekh-Yusef, Shuping Peng
alldispatch at IETF 121
The agenda for alldispatch at IETF 121 is available here. Here are the links to the twelve proposals to be discussed:
1. Proposals on Standards Processes
- IETF Working Group Guidelines and Procedures
- The Internet Standards Process
2. Proposal on Roles for the IETF Chair
3. Proposal on High Assurance Distributed Identifiers using the DNS
4. ALFA 2.0 - the Abbreviated Language for Authorization
5. Proposal on Identifying and Authenticating Home Servers
6. Proposals to update IDMEFv1
- The Incident Detection Message Exchange Format version 2 (IDMEFv2)
- Transport of Incident Detection Message Exchange Format version 2 (IDMEFv2) Messages over HTTPS
7. Proposals on the Security Event Tooken (SET)
- Multi-Push-Based Security Event Token (SET) Delivery Using HTTP
- Push And Pull Based Security Event Token (SET) Delivery
8. A File Format to Aid in Consumer Privacy Enforcement, Research, and Tools
9. EMAIL: Why DKIM Needs Replacing
alldispatch links
- alldispatch Datatracker page is https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/alldispatch/about/.
- Mailing list archive for alldispatch@ietf.org is here.
- alldispatch wiki is here
- alldispatch IETF 121 meeting materials are here.
- alldispatch IETF 121 is currently scheduled for Monday, November 4 from 3:30pm - 5:00pm (subject to change).
diem
The Digital Emblems BoF in Vancouver was very well attended and the mailing list has been very active. The goal of the BoF session in Dublin is to decide on a way forward for the work. On the mailing list there has been discussion of the definition of a digital emblem, why the physical use case for Digital Emblems might be important and a proposed charter.
There are three Internet Drafts on the topic:
draft-bwbh-digital-emblem-model-00 - Conceptual Model for Digitized Emblems
draft-linker-digital-emblem-02 - Problem Statement for a Digital Emblem
draft-haberman-digital-emblem-ps-02 - Problem Statement for Digitized Emblems
Note that all three of these drafts were not updated after the Vancouver meeting. At the end of September a complete redraft of the proposed charter was posted. You can compare the new draft to the original one which is still available here. The proposed, new charter has received substantial discussion on the mailing list.
## diem chairs
Martin Thomson, Russ Housley
diem at IETF 121
An agenda for diem at IETF 121 is not yet published - when it is, it should be available here. In addition, the meeting materials - including presentations - are also not published yet. When they are, they should be available here.
diem links
diem Datatracker page is https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/diem/about/.
Mailing list archive for diem@ietf.org is here.
- diem IETF 121 meeting materials and agenda are not yet published.
- diem IETF 121 is currently scheduled for Tuesday, November 5 from 9:30am - 11:30am (subject to change).
rpp
The RESTful Provisioning Protocol BoF is a very tightly focused working group forming activity. It's background is as a successor/evolution to the very successful Extensible Provisioning Protocol this is used as a communication protocol between domain name registries and registrars. It's mostly about evolving the functions of EPP. Though EPP RFC5730 is still serving the domain name industry well, there is a desire to have more modern tools. RPP would be a provisioning protocol that uses the REST architectural style and the JSON data-interchange format.
Total compatibility between EPP and the proposed RPP is not necessarily a goal of the work in the IETF. EPP, and its extensions, already have a working group in the IETF: REGEXT. A proposed charter has a requirements document created first, and only after that work on protocol specifications.
There is a single document related to rpp in the Datatracker:
EPP XML to RPP JSON conversion rules
rpp chairs
Andy Newton, Darrel Miller
rpp at IETF 121
An agenda has been published for the IETF 121 meeting:
- Welcome
- EPP and ICANN
- RPP Motivations
- What are the motivations for a RESTful Provisioning Protocol
- Prior Work Related to RPP
- Charter Discussion
- Requirements Discussion
- Conclusions and Next Steps
The meeting materials have been published and are available here.
rpp links
- rpp Datatracker page is https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/rpp/about/.
- Mailing list archive for rpp@ietf.org is here.
- rpp IETF 121 meeting materials are here and the agenda is published here.
- The currently proposed charter for rpp is here
- rpp IETF 121 is currently scheduled for Wednesday, November 6 from 9:30am - 11:30am (subject to change).
deepspace
Deep space communications involve long delays (e.g., Earth to Mars is 4-20 minutes) and intermittent communications, because of orbital dynamics. The combination of long delays and intermittent communications makes the round-trip time very large and very variable. Space agencies and private sector are planning to deploy IP networks on celestial bodies, such as Moon or Mars, ground, orbits and vicinity. By having the deep space links also IP, it makes a complete end to end IP network. However, given the delays and disruptions, the upper layers such as transport and application protocols have to be profiled to support this environment. While deep space is defined by ITU as 2M km away from Earth, therefore excluding Moon, this work does include Moon deployment.
The IETF previously had a Delay Tolerant Networking working group and there was some call to merge this work with the work of DTN. The DTN is focused on implementations using the Bundle Protocol and proponents of the BoF on DEEPSPACE have suggested that a separate working group be formed. It a working group forming BoF.
There are already five Internet Drafts related to deepspace:
draft-many-deepspace-ip-architecture-00 - The IP Protocol Stack in Deep Space: Architecture
draft-nandakumar-deepspace-moq-00 - SPACE - Scalable Pubsub, Asymmetric and CachEd transport for Deep Space communications
draft-many-deepspace-quic-profile-00 - QUIC Profile for Deep Space
draft-many-deepspace-ip-assessment-02 - Revisiting the Use of the IP Protocol Stack in Deep Space: Assessment and Possible Solutions
draft-burleigh-deepspace-ip-assessment-00 - Revisiting the Use of the IP Protocol Stack in Deep Space
deepspace chairs
Alvaro Retana, Lars Eggert
deepspace at IETF 121
An agenda for the IETF 121 meeting has been published:
- Introduction
- Use Cases and Problem Statement
- -- Lunar IP networking, Wesley Eddy, MTI Systems
- -- Moon Mobile Provider Requirements, Atsushi Tagami, KDDI Research
- -- Protocol Architecture of Earth-Moon Integrated Network, Xiongwen He, CAST
- -- Architecture and Work Items, Marc Blanchet, Viagenie
- Charter Review
- Next Steps
The meeting materials - including presentations - have not yet been published, but they should be here eventually.
deepspace links
- deepspace Datatracker page is https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/deepspace/about/.
- Mailing list archive for deepspace@ietf.org is here.
- deepspace IETF 121 meeting materials are not yet published but the agenda is published here
- The currently proposed charter for deepspace is here.
- deepspace IETF 121 is currently scheduled for Thursday, November 7 from 1:00pm - 3:00pm (subject to change).
