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Posted: Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

IPv6, Trust and Identity, Key Themes at IETF 74

From the Editor’s Desk, by Mirjam Kühne

Cable car in San Francisco not far from the IETF meeting.

IPv6 dominated the discussion during several working group and side meetings at IETF 74, culminating in a panel of industry experts and other thought leaders who were brought together to explore the obstacles facing widespread adoption and deployment of IPv6. The discussion is summarized in an article called “The Seven Stages of IPv6 Adoption�.

On a related topic, a BoF (birds-of-a-feather) session looked at a possible solution to the problem of how public IPv4 addresses can be shared among different networks in the event that IPv4 addresses are no longer available to be assigned. A description of that proposal can be found below.

A similarly hot topic these days is trust and identity. In this issue, the IETF Journal talks to the cochairs of the OAuth BoF as well as the author of the OAuth specification. The OAuth specification recently was brought into the IETF. (more…)

Posted: Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Address Sharing—Coming to a Network near You

By Mat Ford, Alain Durand, Phil Roberts, Pierre Levis

Hopefully it is not news to you that allocations of IPv4 addresses from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) are currently forecast to be complete during the first half of 2011. Read Report… Allocations from the Regional Internet Registries are anticipated to be complete a year later, although the exact date will vary from registry to registry. This looming address crunch is causing Internet service providers (ISPs) around the world to start to question how they will continue providing IPv4 service for IPv4-speaking customers when there are no longer sufficient IPv4 addresses to allocate. Universal IPv6 deployment was originally thought to be the solution to ensure continued global addressability of an ever-expanding network. However, it appears likely that there will be a gap between the demise of the IPv4 free pool of addresses and the arrival of IPv6.

Several possible solutions aimed at bridging that gap are now emerging. In this article we discuss some of the criteria that will help the community evaluate the merits of those choices and we cover the common and potentially serious issues to which address sharing across multiple subscribers may inevitably give rise. In addition, while network operators are busy devising solutions to the addressing problem that is looming on the horizon, content providers are encouraged to consider the impact of shared addressing on their business and operational practices. (more…)

Posted: Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Message from the IETF Chair

By Russ Housley

Russ Housley, IETF Chair

In spite of the worldwide economic downturn, IETF 74 was a highly successful meeting. The work of the IETF remains relevant and enthusiastic. Held in San Francisco in March 2009, the meeting drew 1,157 people from 49 different countries. The total number of attendees from California was 273, compared with 143, which is the average number who attended each of the previous three meetings.

Juniper Networks, which hosted the meeting, did a great job, and everyone felt welcome (the T-shirt design drew a number of compliments). The social event was well attended, providing an enjoyable and science-filled evening. The site network was subcontracted to VeriLAN Networks, whose staff, working with dedicated volunteers, made sure the network ran smoothly.

The week was filled with the usual mixture of working group (WG) meetings, birds-of-a-feather (BoF) sessions, research group (RG) meetings, and, as always, many side meetings. (more…)

Posted: Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

New BoF Meetings

Descriptions and agendas for all BoF meetings can be found here.

Applications Area
oauth: Open Web Authentication
mmox: Massively Multi-Player
Games and Applications
yam: Yet Another Mail

General Area
pre8prob: Pre-5378 Problem

Internet Area
6ai: IPv6 Address Independence
lisp: Locator/ID Separation
Protocol
mif: Multiple Interfaces
netext: Network-Based Mobility
Extensions

RAI Area
xmpp2: Extensible Messaging
and Presence Protocol 2
atoca: Authority-to-Citizen Alert

Transport Area
shara: Sharing of an IPv4
Address
storm: Storage Maintenance

Posted: Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Words from the IAB Chair

By Olaf Kolkman

Olaf Kolkman, IAB Chair

Spring is in the air . . .

During spring’s IETF meeting, the red dots that appear on nametags, which indicate Internet Architecture Board (IAB) membership, are passed from outgoing to incoming members. I had to say good-bye to a number of folk I had not only enjoyed but also had the honour of working with: Loa Andersson, Barry Leiba, Kurtis Lindquist, and Lixia Zhang. Fortunately, people I’m looking forward working with—Marcelo Bagnulo, Vijay Gill, John Klensin, and Jon Peterson—are replacing them.

Springtime is also the time for the IAB to hold its retreat. The main goal of the retreat is for people to get to know each other and to set direction for the IAB’s work over the coming year. (more…)

Posted: Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

IETF 74 Facts and Figures

RFC Editor Actions (November 2008 - February 2009)
86 RFC published of which

• 51 Standards Track
• 3 BCP
• 30 Informational
• 2 Experimental

100 Internet-Drafts submitted for publication

• 79 were submitted by the IETF

IANA Actions (November 2008 - February 2009)
1455 IETF-related requests processed

• 742 Private Enterprise Numbers
• 88 Port Numbers
• 61 TRIP ITAD Numbers
• 30 media type requests

Posted: Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

IETF 74 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 74 presentations can be found here.

Administrative Updates

The IETF Secretariat has been working on a redesign of the IETF Web site, which turned out to be a much bigger job than anticipated. IETF chair Russ Housley thanked the secretariat staff for their hard work.

He also reported on the Code Sprint from early in the week of the IETF meeting, which was a big success. Five releases were developed, including a new version of the datatracker, which improved the authorisation system and which replaced a number of hard-to-maintain legacy scripts.

Finally, Russ thanked all of the sponsors and contributors who had made the meeting possible.
(more…)

Posted: Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

NomCom Changes

Nominations Committee (NomCom) chair Joel Halpern updated IETF 74 participants on recent NomCom activities, after which he welcomed new IESG and IAB members and described problems and questions the NomCom had faced in the most recent round of selections.

Following Joel’s presentation, a discussion ensued focusing mainly on the revision of RFC 3777 (IAB and IESG Selection, Confirmation, and Recall Process: Operation of the Nominating and Recall Committees). It was suggested that the document be updated to clarify the role of the liaisons. Joel stated that people who serve on the NomCom should not also serve on any bodies the NomCom serves. “Liaisons should be there to help the NomCom,� he said. “They have no vote.�

At IETF 74, Spencer Dawkins presented a number of suggested changes to RFC 3777. The most significant change would be one in which the nominees list would be openly published, which could help remove certain inconsistencies, even though doing so could create the potential for lobbying for certain candidates. Though most attendees agreed that the change would be reasonable, Ted Hardie said he felt the problem is symptomatic of a larger problem—that is, the old boys network problem. He cautioned that the way the pool of volunteers is handled right now “eliminates a certain group of people.� He suggested changing the NomCom process so that a candidate’s absence from an IETF meeting would not disqualify the candidate from serving on the NomCom. The discussion will be continued on the IETF mailing list.

Posted: Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Remembering Jim Bound and Steve Coya

Sadly, the Internet Society and the IETF lost two good friends over the past few months. (more…)

Posted: Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

ISOC Fellows at IETF 74

By Wendy Rickard

Four Internet and network technologists from Africa and South America travelled to San Francisco to attend their first IETF meeting, a trip made possible by the Internet Society as part of their Fellowship to the IETF Programme. Now in its fourth year, the programme helps stimulate Internet growth in developing nations by immersing technologists from those regions in the work being done by the IETF. Fellows are given the opportunity to hone their technical skills and to become more engaged in the standards-development process.

The fellows attending IETF 74 were João Marcelo Ceron of Brazil, Coko Tracy Mirindi Musaza of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Blessings Msowoya of Malawi, and Noah Sematimba of Uganda. Each fellow is paired with a mentor, typically a seasoned IETF participant who can help the fellow navigate the meeting and who can answer questions.

João Marcelo Ceron

As a network manager at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, João Marcelo oversees device and protocol configuration as well as management of the Internet exchange point. He also conducts research in the areas of network management and network security, focusing on empirical experiences and problems he encounters in his professional activities. The results of his research are disseminated in presentations and papers, which, he says, helps other network operators who are working with similar issues. In 2008, he presented a paper at the LACNIC (Latin American and Caribbean Network Information Center) conference exploring the limitations of and the potential solutions for BGP 4 management.

João said the RFCs that the IETF generated are important resources for network administrators like himself, mainly because they assist with problems that come up on a daily basis. They also help him understand the characteristics of various protocols. (more…)

Posted: Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

The Seven Stages of IPv6 Adoption

By Mirjam Kuhne

More than 10 years have passed since RFC 1883—the document that outlined the IPv6 specification—was finalized. Yet even with the depletion of IPv4 addresses looming large on the horizon, IPv6 adoption remains surprisingly, if not persistently, low.

Attendee asks a question to the IPv6 panelists

With the need for adoption and deployment growing more urgent, both the Internet Society and the Internet Engineering Task Force have been working on ways to raise awareness of the importance of IPv6 for the continued growth and functionality of the Internet.

In an effort to bridge the engineering and the rest of the IP-address-dependent world, the Internet Society hosted a panel discussion in March 2009 in conjunction with IETF 74 for the purpose of presenting a wide range of perspectives on IPv6 adoption. The panel, entitled The Seven Stages of IPv6, outlined the opportunities made available by IPv6 from the perspective of network citizens who are in the seven stages of dealing with the enormity of change.

Discussion was wide-ranging, but certain key messages emerged:

• IPv6 is ready for deployment, and deployment is as straightforward as any network technology rollout.
• Even as the general uptake is fairly slow, there are important pockets of IPv6 deployment, demonstrating movement.
• The alternative to deploying IPv6 is not “leaving the network as it isâ€?; the nature of the IPv4 network is changing in response to the lack of available addresses.

(more…)

Posted: Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Bringing OAuth to the IETF

The IETF Journal meets with OAuth experts Hannes Tschofenig, Blaine Cook, and Eran Hammer-Lahav to discuss the decision to bring OAuth to the IETF and the future of the Internet’s latest security specification.

Trent Adams

At IETF 74 in San Francisco, IETF Journal editor Mirjam Kühne and Trent Adams (Outreach Specialist, Identity Community, at the Internet Society) sat down with OAuth BoF cochairs Hannes Tschofenig and Blaine Cook as well as Eran Hammer-Lahav, who authored the OAuth specification document, to find out more about the decision to bring OAuth into the Internet Engineering Task Force, about how the specification compares with similar resources, and about next steps in its development and application.

IETF Journal: There are a number of resources available today that address the growing need to manage and protect a user’s identity on the Internet while making it possible for users to share information from one site to another. How is OAuth related to other work in the identity space? (more…)

Posted: Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

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 74.

There are three bits of status regarding the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF): First, since IETF 73, the IRTF has not published any new RFCs because of document dependencies that are holding up final establishment of the IRTF RFC publication stream. However, three research group (RG) documents are in the RFC Editor’s queue. Additionally, we are finalising the IRTF streams document rights. Our intent is to maximize commonality with the IETF process so as to ease documents’ ability to move between the IRTF and the IETF.

Second, there has been activity in the form of the creation of two new research groups: a group of folks, organized by Martin Stiemerling, has been holding BarBoFs to discuss an RG on network virtualization, and Paul Hoffman is developing a draft charter for an RG to discuss alternate public key formats, certificates, and services called PKNG. (more…)

Posted: Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

IETF Meeting Calendar

IETF 75

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

IETF 76

8–13 November 2009
Host: WIDE
Location: Hiroshima, Japan

IETF 77

21–26 March 2010
Host: TBD
Location: Anaheim, CA, USA

IETF 78

25–30 2010
Host: SIDN
Location: Maastricht, the Netherlands

Posted: Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Recent IESG Document and Protocol Actions

(more…)

Posted: Tuesday, June 30th, 2009