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Introduction to IETF at a VERY high level

Dhruv Dhody

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This is an quick introduction!

A lot of details are missing!

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Newcomers should go to below link for more details: https://www.ietf.org/media/documents/113_newcomers_slides.pdf

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Internet Standards & IETF

  • Internet Standards enables Interoperability. It ensures that s/w and h/w produced by different vendors can work together!
  • The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) is the premier Internet standards organization with open process and freely available standards.
    • The mission of the IETF is to make the Internet work better by producing high quality, relevant technical documents that influence the way people design, use, and manage the Internet.
    • IETF is a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet.

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IETF Principles

  • Open Process - anyone can participate, everything is open!
  • Technical Competence - based on sound network engineering principles; in areas where IETF has technical competence!
  • Volunteer Core - participants/leadership are those who come to IETF to further IETF’s mission of “making the Internet work better!”
  • Rough consensus and running code - combined engineering judgement and real-world experience in implementation/deployment
  • Protocol Ownership - accepts the responsibility for all aspects of the protocol!

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How does IETF work?

  • You are in individual when you participate at IETF
    • No membership / No dues!
    • Mostly sponsored by companies/institutions
    • But we are individuals, i.e. individual opinion and technical arguments matters only!
  • Areas and Working Groups
  • Mailing List is all that matters
    • All formal decision on the list
  • IETF has 3 meetings per year
    • High-bandwidth F2F(?) communication
    • Cross Area collaboration
  • Rough Consensus
    • Measure of opinions, but no voting!
  • Running Code
    • IETF Hackathon
    • Datatracker Code Sprint

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IETF Areas & Working Groups

  • The IETF divides its work into a number of Areas, each comprised of working groups.
    • Applications and Real-Time Area (art)
    • General Area (gen)
    • Internet Area (int)
    • Operations and Management Area (ops)
    • Routing Area (rtg)
    • Security Area (sec)
    • Transport Area (tsv)
  • Areas have Area Directors (ADs) that forms the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG)
  • Working Groups (WGs) are the primary mechanism for development of IETF specifications and guidelines.
    • They are created with a charter that describes the specific problem or deliverables they will deliver.
  • WG have WG co-chairs

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What is RFC?

  • Request for Comment
    • The name is historic
      • it was created as a way to share notes among researchers.
    • RFC Series has a longer history (1969) than the IETF (1986)
      • By Steve Crocker
      • Internet Pioneer Jon Postel was RFC Editor for 28 years!
  • Ideas are published as Internet-drafts
    • Working documents (not standards)
    • This is where you start contributing to IETF!
  • The final consensus ideas are published as RFCs
    • An archival document
    • Over 9200; around 200 RFCs per year!
    • RFCs can be from other streams (apart from IETF)

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Internet-Drafts (I-Ds)

  • Working documents
    • Capture ideas or discussion points
    • Multiple revision leading upto RFCs
  • I-Ds are posted (not published)
    • Anyone can do it
  • Starting point for discussion
    • Don't have to complete/perfect
    • They may go many changes, completely re-written, merged or abandoned!
  • I-Ds expire in 6 months
    • Referenced as “work in progress”
  • Working Group Adopted I-Ds
    • When a WG is ready to develop a particular document, it "adopts" an existing individual document as a starting point.
    • Leads to change in the name
      • draft-ietf-<wgname>-... from draft-<lastname>-...

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Soo, you have an idea...

  • Approach based on how big is the idea?
    • Small deltas on existing work
    • New use case for an existing protocols
    • Large development
    • New protocols
    • New domain of work
  • Is there an appropriate WG?
  • Small ideas with obvious home
    • Write an I-D
    • Socialize the draft
  • New idea with no home
    • Still, write an I-D
    • Notify the related WG, areas
    • Dispatch style WGs
    • Ask help from ADs
  • Big ideas
    • Several I-Ds
    • Focus on explaining what your idea is
    • Build community support
    • HotRFC
    • Birds of a Feather (BoF) to potentially form WGs

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Towards Consensus

  • You need to get agreement and support from across the WG
    • It could be rough! It is NOT a majority rule!
  • Consensus doesn't require that everyone is happy and agrees that the chosen solution is the best one. Consensus is when everyone is sufficiently satisfied with the chosen solution, such that they no longer have specific objections to it.
  • You must address any valid technical objection
    • Address, not necessarily accommodate!
  • Read more
    • RFC 7282: On Consensus and Humming in the IETF

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Few tips to participate

  • Join the mailing list - https://www.ietf.org/how/lists/
  • Attend IETF meetings - https://www.ietf.org/how/meetings/
    • Online with Fee Waiver available
  • Prepare for the meeting
    • Agenda, slides, internet drafts are posted in advance
    • Check past discussions - mailing list archives, minutes
    • Pick a small set of sessions to prepare in-depth (be a tourist for the rest)
  • Ask for help
  • Learn the culture
  • IETF 113 was Hybrid in Vienna
  • IETF 114 in July

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Questions?

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