1 of 5

IAB's Role in Chartering/New Work

Matthew, Dhruv, Alvaro (IAB)

​

IAB/IESG Joint Session, 2024 Retreat, London

2 of 5

IAB's role in chartering/new work

  • IAB has a role in covering and shepherding new work in the IETF
  • It also has a role in architectural oversight
  • IAB members can (as individuals):
    • Review/comment on BoF proposals as requested by IESG
    • Participate on joint BoF coordination calls
    • Cover/shepherd BoFs
  • This is quite reactive
  • New, architecturally significant work is bubbling up well in advance of submitting a BoF proposal
  • Can the IABs role in chartering and new work by less reactive?

3 of 5

IAB's role in chartering/new work

  • Some examples of semi-formalized fora where potential new work is discussed in public:
    • IAB workshops
    • IAB technical programs
    • IETF side meetings (increasingly used to socialize new ideas at scale)
    • Existing Working Groups

4 of 5

What could be leveraged from architecture oversight role to support WG chartering/new work?

  • Consider anything relevant in IAB workshops / programs in charter reviews?

​

​

​

​

​

​

  • Help non-IETF participants bring in emerging work that impacts IETF protocols?

​

[RFC2850]:

​

The IAB will convene invitational workshops to perform in-depth

reviews of particular architectural issues. Such reviews may include

consideration of relevant IETF and IRTF activities, and of work in

other organizations, and for this purpose the workshop may invite

presentations by qualified parties on the design goals and decisions,

technology choices, and other pertinent aspects of these activities.

The results of such a review will be a report which may give advice

to the IETF community and the IESG.

5 of 5

What could be leveraged from architecture oversight role to support WG chartering/new work?

  • Provide support to working groups / areas for long-term issues, staying detached from standards making process?
    • Highlighting early work that is architecturally important
    • Help resolve long-running disputes and WG charter issues that impact architecture
      • WGs have technical advisors but these are not well used

​

​

​

​

​

  • Some examples where more proactive awareness might help, now or in the future (from the Routing Area):
    • Data Center VPN architectures (NVO3): Centralized vs distributed control
    • IPv6 routing headers for tunneling (SRv6): Collapsing overlay/underlay layers
    • Network Attestation for Secure Routing (NASR)

​

[RFC2850]:

The IAB may organize ad hoc bodies of independent technical experts

to adjudicate technical disputes