Publications 

Full edition in PDF format

Full edition in PDF format
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Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008

Focus on IPv6 at IETF 72

From the Editor’s Desk, by Mirjam Kühne

Set against the beautiful backdrop of a golf resort near Dublin, IETF 72 offered an opportunity to revisit many of the same themes discussed at prior meetings.

Citywest Hotel Convention Center near Dublin, site of IETF 72

IPv6 was, once again, a hot topic, most notably during the Wednesday plenary, for which the Internet Architecture Board organized a panel to discuss IPv6. Panelists consisted of a number of IPv6 operators and experts, each of whom described their experiences deploying IPv6 within their networks and organizations. Read more about the panel discussion…

In this issue, Shane Kerr takes a look at the IETF response to the DNS vulnerability that was discovered by Dan Kaminsky and that is often referred to as the Kaminsky Attack - Read more…. While the discussions within the IETF took place primarily within working groups, Shane offers a good look at the history of DNS security and a brief review of recent DNS security work as well as a compilation of IETF responses. (more…)

Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008

IETF Meetings Related to Peer-to-Peer and Bandwidth Management

By Leslie Daigle

As bandwidth management has become an important topic, the IETF has held a handful of meetings to discuss the issues it involves and possible IETF work items that might address them. One of those meetings was a one-day workshop organized by the Real-time Applications and Infrastructure (RAI) area and held at Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the end of May 2008. Following that were two BoF (birds-of-a-feather) sessions, held at IETF 72 in Dublin. (more…)

Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008

Message from the IETF Chair

By Russ Housley

Russ Housley, IETF Chair

Held at City West in Dublin, in July 2008, IETF 72 was by all measures a highly successful meet-ing. With 1,183 people from 48 different countries in attendance, the week was filled with the usual mix of working group (WG) meetings, BoF (birds-of-a-feather) sessions, research group (RG) meetings, and, as always, many side meetings. Our host, Alcatel-Lucent, certainly made everyone feel welcome, and we had a wonderful time at the Guinness Storehouse on Tuesday evening. The network connecting City West to the rest of the Internet was provided by eircom, and the local network was provided by Alcatel-Lucent, with considerable support from volunteers.

Since IETF 71, 5 new WGs were chartered and 11 WGs were closed, leading to approximately 115 chartered WGs in total. Between the meetings, the WGs and their individual contributors pro-duced 475 new Internet-Drafts and generated 1,071 updated Internet-Drafts. The Internet Engi-neering Steering Group approved 134 Internet-Drafts for publication as RFCs and the RFC Editor published 88 new RFCs. (more…)

Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008

Words from the IAB Chair

By Olaf Kolkman

Olaf Kolkman, IAB Chair

“To the universal deployment of IPv6″ is the toast to which some of our colleagues have raised their glasses for nearly 10 years. That toast can be heard during unofficial events and gatherings at IETF meetings that have taken place since IETF 43, when, after an IPng working group session, some folks retreated to empty a few bottles of Scotch. The relevance of this factoid is linked to the technical plenary at IETF 72, during which the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) expressed interest in IPv6 deployment issues.

In the context of the emerging completion of the IANA IPv4 registry, the IAB asked itself a number of questions such as, What are the actual deployment barriers in various environments ranging from Internet service providers (ISPs) to application service providers, to business enterprises, to end users? What are the approaches toward IPv4 completion contingency planning? What are the success factors inherent in the actual deployment of IPv6? and, What can the IAB do to hasten IPv6’s deployment? (more…)

Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008

IETF 72 Facts and Figures

Registered attendees: 1,183
Countries: 48
New WGs: 5
Closed WGsv11
WGs Chartered: 115
New Internet-Drafts: 475
Updated Internet-Draftsv1,071
IETF Last Calls: 105
Approvals: 134
(March–June 2008)

97 RFCs published of which

• 44 standards tracks
• 4 BCP
• 107 Internet–Drafts submitted for publication
• 79 submitted by the IETF

IANA Actions (March–June 2008)
Processed 1,422 IETF-related requests of which:

• 775 Private Enterprise Numbers
• 66 Port Numbers
• 67 TRIP ITAD Numbers
• 11 media-type requests

Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008

Plenary Report

By Mirjam Kühne

Mirjam Kühne

Note: This is not a complete report of the plenary sessions; rather, it is a summary of the highlights of the discussions. All IETF 72 presentations can be found here.

Even though Irish is the native language of Ireland, English has become the dominant language, just like IP is the dominant language of networking,” said Kevin O’Callaghan, Ireland’s leader of Alcatel Ireland, which served as host organization for IETF 72. Kevin welcomed participants to Dublin and said he was honoured to address the meeting. “It is fundamental to allow Nets around the world to communicate,” he said. “The impacts on society have been truly beneficial.”

On behalf of Alcatel-Lucent, which played a significant role in shaping the telecom infrastructure in Ireland, Kevin expressed his delight in having the opportunity to host and sponsor the IETF in Dublin. He was impressed by the number of people attending, the variety of organizations represented, and the number of languages being spoken. (more…)

Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008

Real-Time Text

By Arnoud van Wijk

When we want to communicate electronically, most of us use voice and, at an increasing rate, video. When we do, such communications occur in real time (See ref 1); that means that we send and receive audio and video continuously as we communicate, and we consider this as the normal way to converse with each other. (more…)

Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008

Talking with Jorge L. Contreras

The attorney for the IETF talks with the IETF Journal about intellectual property, licensing, and what makes the IETF so unusual in the world of copyrights and copylefts.

IETF attorney Jorge L. Conteras

IETF Journal: How did you get involved in the IETF?
Jorge L. Contreras: My firm, WilmerHale, has provided legal advice for the IETF from the early days. I took over from a partner who left about 10 years ago and have been working with IETF since then.

IJ: Did you ever think you would be interested in Internet standards?
JLC: I have an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, so I was always interested in technical issues. But the law that applies to standards organizations was much less developed when I began practicing law in 1991. The first case to draw significant attention to intellectual property issues in standards organizations involved Dell Computer. In 1998, Dell participated in an SDO [standards development organization] that was creating a video bus standard. They did not comply with the IP policy of the SDO and then later tried to enforce their patents against other SDO participants. The U.S. Department of Justice brought an action against Dell, with the result that Dell’s patents were no longer enforceable. It was a significant result and one that really shook up the world of standards law. (more…)

Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008

The Internet and Bandwidth-Intensive Activities

By Leslie Daigle

Scattered across the globe, a number of networking issues are being noted that can loosely be classed as stemming from bandwidth-intensive activities. These are applications and services that cause traffic that is higher in bandwidth, that follows paths neither anticipated nor desired by the network architect and operator, and that has an impact on other network activities traffic. As a result of the degradation in service the situation causes for other users, network providers often turn to bandwidth management in an attempt to curtail or restrict the excessive flow. (more…)

Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008

IETF 72 Welcomes ISOC Fellows

By Wendy Rickard

ISOC Fellowship to the IETF programme fellows and mentors at IETF 72 in Dublin

Six technology specialists and researchers from Africa, Asia, and South America journeyed to Dublin, Ireland, for their first IETF meeting as part of the Internet Society’s (ISOC’s) Fellowship to the IETF programme. Guided by their mentors and supported by ISOC staff, the fellows had been selected from among dozens of applicants and given opportunities to sharpen their technical skills, indulge their interests, and meet face-to-face with colleagues and others whom they’d known only by reputation or by way of time spent on working group (WG) mailing lists.

By all accounts, the fellows benefited considerably from the experience, bringing with them—and taking away—their own unique perspectives. (more…)

Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008

Joining the IETF Fold

Ali Hammad Akbar

An IETF 72 fellow reflects on working group politics, the culture of leadership, and the IETF dress code.

I’d like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to the Internet Society and its sponsors for their sponsorship of the ISOC Fellowship to the IETF program and to the organizers at the IETF, who made it possible for me to participate in the 72nd meeting of the IETF. All of the travel, lodging, and hospitality arrangements extended during the stay were splendid and were handled very professionally. My indebtedness is to Leni Nazare, Martin Kupres, and Mirjam Kühne for their efforts. (more…)

Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008

IPv6 Deployment: Lessons from the Trenches

By Gregory M. Lebovitz

An IETF 72 panel looks at experiences with IPv6 deployment.

IETF 72 panel discusses IPv6 deployment

During the IETF 72 technical plenary, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) hosted a panel on the subject of IPv6 deployment. The five-member panel was composed of Internet community members who have firsthand experience with operational IPv6 deployments. They represent the perspectives of Regional Internet Registries, or RIRs; network operations teams; broadband services; content delivery services; and host applications. The panelists communicated their IPv6 adoption successes and hurdles, as well as their IPv4-depletion contingency plans, including carrier-grade network address translations (NATs), or CGNs, a concept that is currently under debate. (more…)

Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008

IPv6 Transition at IETF72

By Geoff Huston

The developmental work of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) on IPv6 has, from the outset, included the study of the particular issues associated with transition to IPv6. The first effort to explore the transition space was at IETF 29 in March 1994, and it was termed TACIT, an acronym of Transition and Coexistence including Testing. While it was admittedly a forced acronym, it was illustrative of the IETF’s desire to include consideration of transition issues as part of the design of IPv6 itself. (more…)

Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008

IETF Response to the Kaminsky DNS Vulnerability

By Shane Kerr

If you follow the news about information technology, you probably have heard about a new DNS vulnerability discovered by Dan Kaminsky, which is often referred to as the Kaminsky Attack. Since the DNS is a protocol of the IETF—and certainly one of the most successful IETF protocols—let’s have a look at how the IETF is dealing with the issue. (more…)

Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008

IRTF Report

By Aaron Falk

Aaron Falk, IRTF Chair

What follows are summaries of several updates on the Internet Research Groups (RGs), some of which were reported during the Technical Plenary at IETF 72.

Since IETF 71, three Internet Research Task Force (IRTF)-stream RFCs have been published, including RFC 5166 (TMRG), RFC 5184 (MOBOPTS RG), and RFC 5207 (HIPRG). Three drafts are in the RFC Editor’s queue, and two are in process toward publication.

A document is being developed that proposes to formally establish an IRTF RFC document stream. The publication is entwined with draft-iab-streams-headers-boilerplates as well as the revision to RFC 3932.

There is still continued interest in establishing a research group (RG) on unwanted traffic mitigations and another one on network virtualization. (more…)

Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008

Recent IESG Document and Protocol Actions

Listing of recent IESG Document and Protocol Actions (more…)

Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008

IETF Meeting Calendar

IETF 73

16–21 November 2008
Host: Google
Location: Minneapolis, MN, USA

IETF 74

22–27 March 2009
Host: Juniper Networks
Location: San Francisco, CA, USA

IETF 75

26–31 July 2009
Host: .SE
Location: Stockholm, Sweden

IETF 76

9–13 November 2009
Host: WIDE
Location: Hiroshima, Japan

Posted: Friday, November 7th, 2008