[Chapter-delegates] Internet Society's IETF 80 Rough Guide Follow Up

Wed Jul 20 06:25:57 PDT 2011

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Follow-up to the Internet Society's Rough Guide to IETF 80's Hot Topics 
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In March 2011, we published the Rough Guide to IETF 80's Hot Topics. Here now is the follow up to the meetings highlighted in that guide.

For IETF 80, which was held in Prague, Czech Republic we focused our attention on working groups, BoFs, plenaries, and other events in the following broad categories:

- Common and Open Internet
- Global Addressing
- Security and Stability
- Trust and IDentity

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The Internet Society (ISOC) also held another expert panel "IPv6 -- How will we know we've arrived?" that gathered experts to discuss the what kinds of milestones are we looking for to measure the success of IPv6 deployment and the Internet's continued success. Details are at:

https://www.isoc.org/isoc/conferences/ietf80-briefing/

Looking ahead, the final preparations are underway for IETF 81, in Quebec City 24 to 29 July 2011, so we will soon be bringing you a guide to the expected highlights of that meeting.

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Common and Open Internet
As P2P and VoIP technologies become more prevalent, and network usage patterns sometimes deviate from their architects' expectations, managing bandwidth to allow best use for customers becomes an increasingly important topic.
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cdni (Content Distribution Network Interconnection) BoF

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are widely deployed to improve scalability and performance of content delivery on the Internet. There is currently no standard way to interconnect CDN platforms. This BOF discussed the proposed development of IETF standards to facilitate such CDN interconnection. These standards might include protocols for 1) exchange of metadata between CDNs, 2) exchange of transaction logs & monitoring information, 3) exchange of request-routing information, 4) exchange of policies & capabilities, and 5) content management/flushing. 

Outcomes:

-  Approximately 120 people attended the CDNI BoF.
- A show of hands indicated consensus that the problem was well understood and that the IETF was the right place to solve it. After review of the draft charter and some real-time tweaks, there was consensus in the room that the draft charter identifies the right set of deliverables and that a WG should be created with that charter. Many individuals volunteered to be editors or reviewers of the CDNI deliverables.
- The charter has been refined and the IESG recently announced formation of the CDNI working group in the Transport Area.
- The CDNI WG will hold its first meeting during IETF 81.

Proceedings, including minutes:
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/cdni.html

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conex (Congestion Exposure) WG

The purpose of the CONEX working group is to develop a mechanism by which senders inform the network about the congestion encountered by previous packets on the same flow.  The mechanism to be developed by the CONEX WG will enable the sender to also relay the congestion information back into the network in-band at the IP layer, such that the total level of congestion is visible to all IP devices along the path, from where it could, for example, be provided as input to traffic management.

WG discussions at IETF 80 centered around congestion exposure concepts and abstract mechanism (draft-ietf-conex-abstract-mech) and use cases (draft-ietf-conex-concepts-uses). In particular, partial deployment and impact of traffic shaping. Options for conex markings in IPv6 datagrams (draft-krishnan-conex-ipv6) were also intensively discussed. Another item discussed was the application of CONEX in mobile networks.

Proceedings, including minutes:
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/conex.html

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The dane (formerly keyassure) working group is looking at the use of DNSSEC to facilitate the establishment of cryptographically secure communications for Internet applications. It is specifically chartered to specify mechanisms and techniques that allow Internet applications to establish cryptographically secured communications. This is accomplished by using information distributed through DNSSEC for discovering and authenticating public keys associating a service located at a domain name. Building upon the implementation and deployment of DNSSEC, this work seeks to use the chain of trust established in the DNS to enable on-demand establishment of secure channels for a multiplicity of applications. The technical and business implications of this work are significant. This meeting focused on the development of the protocol draft and harmonizing pkix and dane. A recurring topic during the meeting was the need for additional clarity on the use cases and/or requirements.  

Outcomes: 
- Continued progress towards chartered milestones
- The use cases document (http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-dane-use-cases/) is now in Last Call

Proceedings, including minutes:
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/dane.html 

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dnsext (DNS Extensions) WG
The DNSEXT working group advances DNS protocol-related RFCs on the standards track while thoroughly reviewing further proposed extensions.

At IETF 80, a discussion on aliasing took place. One of the conclusions is that there are many trade-offs in the area of user expectations, application needs, DNS ops practices and DNS protocol itself, and most of them are policy, not protocol related.

Proceedings, including minutes:
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/dnsext.html

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rtcweb (Real Time Communication on the World Wide Web) BoF

Several proprietary implementations of browser-based real-time communication platforms exist, for example for web conferencing or gaming. These implementations typically require non-standard browser extensions to be installed. This BoF meeting will discuss proposals to standardise this functionality so that this type of application can run in any compatible browser without the need for additional software.

Outcomes:

- The meeting was very well attended (more than 250 attendees) and showed both strong support for letting this go forward and quite good consensus that we had achieved "roughly the right level" in the proposed charter. The Friday work session laid out some of the challenges ahead, including thorny issues such as what happens when intellectual property rights claims meet "mandatory to implement."
- The work will go forward in cooperation with the W3C.

Proceedings, including minutes:
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/rtcweb.html

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tictoc (Timing over IP Connection and Transfer of Clock) WG

The tictoc working group is chartered to address next generation network time synchronization requirements. It is looking into enhancements for both the Network Time Protocol (NTP) and the IEEE 1588 Precise Time Protocol (PTP). The work is currently focused on MPLS encapsulations, security requirements, and network management. This meeting also had discussion on benchmarking for time synchronization protocols prompted by a presentation on some comparative analysis of the performance of NTP and PTP. 

Outcomes:
- Worked progressed on MPLS encapsulation and PTP MIB drafts. 
- Discussions were held on possible security requirements for time synchronization protocols. 
- Additional analysis and possible standardization of time synchronization protocol performance discussed. 

Proceedings, including minutes:
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/tictoc.html 

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tsvarea (Transport Area) Open Meeting

bufferbloat.net was a new project initiated by Jim Gettys to tackle congestion and latency problems created by oversized buffers in the end-to-end path. Jim presented his research and the project's progress during this open area meeting. The problem is well-known to transport experts, but there is renewed energy in tackling it and a focus for activity as a result of Jim's efforts. Google also reported on their SPDY (pronounced "SPeeDY") application-layer protocol for transporting content over the web, designed specifically for minimal latency.

Outcomes:
- Interesting presentations and lots of lively discussion
- The upcoming issue of IETF Journal (vol. 7, issue 1) carries an article from Jim Gettys on the topic of bufferbloat.

Proceedings, including minutes:
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/tsvarea.html

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Global Addressing
There is steadily increasing momentum to deploy IPv6 as the IPv4 address pool approaches depletion. While much work is ongoing to support interoperability in coexisting IPv4 and IPv6 network environments, there are also interesting developments in emerging IPv6 environments.
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In this category, we followed the 6lowpan (IPv6 Over Low Power Networks) WG and renum BoF at IETF 80. However, we have no specific updates to provide. For proceedings, including minutes, see:

6lowpan (IPv6 Over Low Power Networks) WG
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/6lowpan.html

renum (Site Renumbering) BoF:
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/renum.html

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Security and Stability
Securing the DNS and greater assurance in routing is critical for the ongoing expansion and evolution of the Internet in all areas of our societies and economies.
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karp (Keying and Authentication for Routing Protocols) WG

The karp WG is focused on improving the state of authentication in all the Internet routing protocols. Many routing protocol deployments, if they use authentication at all, are using older (possibly deprecated) cryptographic algorithms and are missing some modern security mechanisms, like replay protection, algorithm agility, or key rollover. In addition, the issue of key management is a major stumbling block to deployment. The karp WG is working to address these requirements in a number of IETF routing protocols. The foundational documents have stabilized, and this meeting included analysis of BGP, LDP, MSDP, and OSPF along with multicast router key management. 

Outcomes: 
- Of the original three foundational documents, the threats/requirements draft has completed working group last call, the design guide is progressing in the working group, and work on the framework document has been stopped until a clear need has been identified. 
- The chairs are soliciting volunteers to work on additional routing protocols including IS-IS, RSVP-TE, and PIM. 

Proceedings, including minutes:
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/karp.html 

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sidr (Secure Inter-Domain Routing) WG 

The SIDR WG is focused on securing inter-domain routing. The approach being developed is Resource PKI (RPKI) which adds an authentication framework to BGP requiring a certificate management infrastructure. This is a key technology for improving trust in the routing infrastructure. This meeting focused on updates to current drafts completing the current route validation work, reviewing proposed new work items, and implementation reports. In addition, work started on the newly chartered path validation efforts. 

Outcomes: 
- The working group has completed a number of drafts related to origin validation. These drafts are in various stages of IESG review. 
- The path validation work has been chartered and initial drafts for threats, requirements, and protocols have been produced. 

Proceedings, including minutes: http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/sidr.html

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websec (Web Security) WG

The websec WG is chartered to document web security problems and design requirements for web applications and to specify standards for a set of deployed HTTP-based web security solutions. This working group is chartered to work closely with several IETF Apps Area WGs as well as appropriate W3C working groups. This meeting focused on several topics including the framework document, strict transport security, and do-not-track. 

Outcomes: 
- Progress on a number of ongoing work items. 

Proceedings, including minutes:
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/websec.html 

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Trust and identity
As public concerns increase about security of infrastructure, privacy, trust, and identity on the Internet, these themes recur in several working group discussions.
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abfab (Application Bridging for Federated Access Beyond Web) WG

The abfab WG is chartered to develop federated solutions for non-web applications using EAP, AAA (Radius and Diameter), and SAML. It grew out of work done by the Moonshot project sponsored by JANET in the UK. Two sessions were held and topics covered included core architecture, use cases, an update on the moonshot implementation, gss-eap and aaa-saml related drafts and several new individual drafts.

Outcomes: 
- Progress on a number of ongoing work items. 

Proceedings, including minutes:
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/abfab.html 

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oauth (Open Authentication Protocol) WG

The Open Authentication Protocol is a mechanism that allows a user to give third-parts web sites or applications access to protected resources without providing them access to their long term credentials or resources. The oauth WG was chartered to update and improve the security mechanisms in the original oauth protocol. The primary result of the this meeting was to expedite the completion of the oauth 2.0 documents. 

Outcomes:
- The oauth WG was moved from the Applications Area to the Security Area. 
- There was renewed emphasis on completing the oauth 2.0 work items in a timely manner. 

Proceedings, including minutes: 
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/oauth.html

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plasma (Policy Augmented S/Mime) BoF

Several Internet-Drafts have been submitted that establish a more robust access control mechanism where cryptographic access to the message is only granted after the access check. This proposed working group would develop a framework for enforcing a more robust access control mechanism, based on existing CMS, S/MIME and SAML-based policy enforcement standards.
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/plasma/currentmaillist.html

Outcome:
- There is interest in continuing discussion of this work in the IETF.

Proceedings, including minutes:
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/plasma.html 

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Other Items of Interest
In addition to formal working group (WG) and birds-of-a-feather (BoF) meetings, other developments around the IETF meeting may be of interest
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woes (Web Objection Encryption and Signatures)

This was an informal pre-BoF session held to have an open discussion of several drafts that would make use of formats which are based on JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) for signing and or encryption. For more information, see:

http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-rescorla-jsms-00.txt
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-jones-json-web-token-01
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/woes/current/maillist.html

Outcome: 
- This is interest in consolidating the existing proposals on the table and continuing the discussions on whether or not to charter a working group on this topic. 

There are no proceeding because this was in informal meeting outside the official agenda of the IETF. 

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http-state (HTTP State Management Mechanism) WG

The IESG has approved 'HTTP State Management Mechanism'
(draft-ietf-httpstate-cookie-23.txt) as a Proposed Standard. There are several topics related to state management emerging on the list:

http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpstate/

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