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Posted: Monday, February 23rd, 2009
IETF JournalTable of Contents - Volume 4 Issue 3 (February 2009)
Full edition in PDF formatThe full edition is available here for download in PDF format (1.5MB). Posted: Monday, February 23rd, 2009
The Past Meets the Present at IETF 73From the Editor’s Desk, by Mirjam Kühne  View of Minneapolis, site of IETF 73. Photo by Peter Löthberg Since it was first published some 30 years ago, the IP model has emerged as one of the most influential technological developments of our time. As it turns out, its evolution is also one of the more interesting stories in the history of the Internet. At IETF 73, Internet Architecture Board member Dave Thaler gave a well-received presentation called Evolution of the IP Model, which was based on an Internet-Draft published last November. An article based on the presentation, which Dave adapted specifically for the IETF Journal, appears on this page. Jon Postel was remembered throughout the week, most notably at a private dinner in Minneapolis commemorating the 10-year passing of Jon and honouring this year’s winner of the Internet Society’s Jonathan B. Postel Service Award. Jon’s memory also was deeply felt during the Plenary, particularly when Dave, as part of his presentation, invoked Jon’s famous credo: Be con-servative in what you send; be liberal in what you receive. (more…) Posted: Monday, February 23rd, 2009
Evolution of the IP ModelBy Dave Thaler  Figure 1: The model exposed by IP to higher-layer protocols and applications In the technical plenary, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) presented its work on the Evolution of the IP (Internet Protocol) model. For purposes of this work, the IP model refers to the service model exposed by the IP layer to upper-layer protocols and applications (figure 1). That is, the IP model can be viewed either as a set of behaviours that can be relied on by higher layers or as a set of expectations that higher layers have around IP. In this sense, it is similar to a loosely defined contract that has evolved over time. (more…) Posted: Monday, February 23rd, 2009
Message from the IETF ChairBy Russ Housley  Russ Housley, IETF Chair I am pleased to report that IETF 73, which was held in Minneapolis in November 2008, was a highly successful meeting. While the total number of attendees was down (937), the number of countries represented was up (52). Many people attribute the reduced attendance to the global economic down-turn. That may be true, yet the work of the IETF remains relevant, and the people who came were enthusiastic. Many working groups made significant progress in Minneapolis. Google was the meeting host and certainly made everyone feel welcome. The social event was well attended, and everyone had a fun, game-filled evening. The site network was subcontracted to VeriLAN Networks, whose staff, working with a group of dedicated volunteers, provided a very sound network. (more…) Posted: Monday, February 23rd, 2009
Words from the IAB ChairBy Olaf Kolkman The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) has a number of responsibilities, one of which is to maintain the relationships between the IETF and external organizations. RFC 2850 describes the process in the following manner:
The IAB acts as representative of the interests of the IETF and the Internet Society in technical liaison relationships with other organizations concerned with standards and other technical and organizational issues relevant to the world-wide Internet.” Not completely coincidentally, these are the same words I used when I opened this column in the October 2007 issue of the IETF Journal. I was recently reminded of that role when Sha Zukan, undersecretary of the United Nations, invited the IETF and the IAB, through the Internet Society (ISOC), to provide an annual performance report on the steps the organization has taken toward “enhanced cooperation” on public policy issues pertaining to the Internet (PDF). (more…) Posted: Monday, February 23rd, 2009
IETF 73 Facts and FiguresRegistered attendees: 937 Posted: Monday, February 23rd, 2009
Plenary ReportBy Wendy Rickard In a departure from its usual agenda, IETF 73 merged the administrative and technical plenaries into one session. Internet Architecture Board (IAB) chair Olaf Kolkman described the change as serving two purposes: One was an at-tempt to “try and open up more time in the agenda” and the other was to miti-gate some of the venue logistics associated with rearranging rooms for the plenaries. (more…) Posted: Monday, February 23rd, 2009
ISOC Fellows Attend IETF 73By Wendy Rickard  Internet Society Fellowship to the IETF fellows, mentors, and ISOC staff attend IETF 73 in Minneapolis. Before IETF 73, Terry Rupeni had a relatively good understanding of the work being done by the IETF. What he couldn’t quite grasp was the work flow. After a few days, the mild-mannered engineer from Fiji was clearly in the flow, and he was becoming much more comfortable with the temperature, both inside and outside the hotel. As a newcomer to the IETF, Terry’s trip to Minneapolis was made possible as part of the Internet Society (ISOC) Fellowship to the IETF programme. What did he think? “It’s a little cold,” he said of the city. The temperature inside was a different story. “It can get a little hot in there,” Terry said, referring to both the working-group meetings and the plenary sessions. “Here people go right up to the mic,” he said. “Where I come from, it’s not part of our culture to speak up in this manner. In Fiji, you don’t voice your opinion in public.” (more…) Posted: Monday, February 23rd, 2009
Jonathan B. Postel Service Award Granted to EsLaRedBy Wendy Rickard  Lois Postel, Postel Award winner Ermanno Pietrosemoli, and ISOC president Lynn St. Amour at the Postel Service Award ceremony in Minneapolis in November 2008. Photo by Kevin Craemer Internet Society president Lynn St. Amour announced at the IETF 73 plenary that Fundación Escuela Latinoamericana de Redes (EsLaRed) had been granted the coveted Jonathan B. Postel Service Award. It is the first time in the 10-year history of the award that it has been given to an organization rather than to an individual. The 2008 award commemorates the 10-year passing of Internet pioneer Jonathan B. Postel, who is best known for being editor of the RFC series and for administering the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (see article, next page). A private dinner and award ceremony, which took place later in the week, was attended by Jon Postel’s brother, Russ Postel, and Jon’s mother, Lois Postel, who presented the award to EsLaRed president Ermanno Pietrosemoli. (more…) Posted: Monday, February 23rd, 2009
In Memory of Jon PostelBy Wendy Rickard “If the Net does have a god, he is probably Jon Postel.” - The Economist  Jon Postel. Photo by Peter Löthberg Last October marked the 10-year anniversary of the passing of Internet engineer, standard-bearer, and icon Jon Postel. While Jon’s work contributed in countless ways to the advancement and smooth functioning of the Internet, it was his role as RFC editor—a role he created and held from April 7, 1969, until his untimely death on October 16, 1998—and his work with the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) that are of particular significance to the IETF community. To those who knew him, Jon was a brilliant and astute engineer whose soft-spoken manner belied his dogged pursuit of excellence, a characteristic especially evident in his role as editor of the RFC document series. His feedback to authors was not confined to grammar and phrasing, for which he was a stickler; it included any potential inconsistencies, ambiguities, and duplications of effort. Jon’s longtime colleague Joyce Reynolds, wrote in RFC 2555 that while operating systems and computers have changed over the years, “Jon’s perseverance about the consistency of the RFC style and the quality of the documents remained true.” (more…) Posted: Monday, February 23rd, 2009
IPv4/IPv6 Coexistence and TransitionBy Fred Baker
The Internet faces a transition from its traditional IPv4 to IPv6, with a period of coexistence. Here is one technologist’s view of the road ahead for the Internet Protocol and IP networks from the perspective of work happening in the IETF. The time is rapidly approaching when the last of the IPv4 address space will be allocated. Even though options are being considered that would enable the trading of IPv4 address space as a commodity (which has important implications for routing) as well as for sliding an ISP interconnection layer underneath the IP protocol, networks requiring new address space in large amounts will deploy IPv6. Therefore, some form of coexistence and, eventually, a transition are inevitable. To that end, the IETF has explored several transition mechanisms, most of which are described in RFC 4213. (more…) Posted: Monday, February 23rd, 2009
KENET: A Bandwidth Management Case StudyBy Kevin Chege and Mat Ford As part of ongoing efforts to better understand and respond to the variety of networking issues that can loosely be classed as stemming from bandwidth-intensive activities (see “The Internet and Bandwidth-Intensive Activities,” IETF Journal, Volume 4 Issue 2), the Internet Society invited Kevin Chege of the Kenya Education Network (KENET) to attend IETF 73 in Minneapolis. Kevin has considerable personal experience dealing with the impact that bandwidth-intensive applications can have on a relatively low-bandwidth region of the global network. Attending the IETF meeting allowed Kevin to share his perspective with the engineers working in the newly formed ALTO (Application-Layer Traffic Optimization) and LEDBAT (Low Extra Delay Background Transport) working groups (WGs) and to learn from them how these activities might help him in his work. (more…) Posted: Monday, February 23rd, 2009
Revisiting Unwanted TrafficBy Leslie Daigle In March 2006, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) held an invitational workshop to look at the problem of unwanted traffic. The official workshop report was published as RFC 4948, and a more complete discussion of the implications appears in an article by Elwyn Davies that was published in the IETF Journal in December 2007 (Volume 3, Issue 3). (more…) Posted: Monday, February 23rd, 2009
Resource CertificationBy Geoff Huston Opinions vary as to what aspect of the Internet’s infrastructure represents the greatest common vulnerability to the security and safety of Internet users, but it is generally regarded that attacks that are directed at the network’s infrastructure are the most insidious, and in that case the choice is probably between the Domain Name System (DNS) and the inter-domain routing system. (more…) Posted: Monday, February 23rd, 2009
IRTF ReportBy Aaron Falk
IETF 73 Acknowledgements and Interim MeetingsMany thanks to Google, Inc., and its staff, the VeriLAN Team, AMS, and the following volunteers for making IETF 73 a great success. (more…) Posted: Monday, February 23rd, 2009
IETF Meeting CalendarIETF 74 IETF 75 IETF 76 IETF 77 Posted: Monday, February 23rd, 2009
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This article in Japanese
Here are a few items on Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) developments since IETF 72:
