Earlier this year, OpenStand Principles affirming partner, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) hosted IETF 96 in Berlin, Germany. More than a thousand engineers attended the meeting, spending a week reviewing the latest issues and areas of interest in Internet protocol engineering. As part of this meeting, the IETF offers the opportunity for new development projects to be introduced.
New IETF activities may be initiated three ways: The charter of an existing working group can be extended, a new working group can be formed to directly address a focused project, or if further discussion is needed to determine if the new work is necessary, a Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) session can be held. BoF sessions are typically required to discuss goals and scope for any new activities.
At the IETF 96 meeting, many proposals were received. Prior to the meeting, the IETF met to discuss which proposals should proceed. While there were many interesting proposals for potential new work, the IETF settled on the following:
- LEDGER: This is a proposed new protocol to define how connectors route and move digital assets between different payment networks and ledgers.
- QUIC: This is a UDP-based transport protocol that provides multiplexed streams over an encrypted transport. The BoF was around a proposed working group to standardize a new transport protocol.
- Low-Power Wide Area Networks (LP-WANs): This BoF discussed these areas of low-power and the problems that arise in LP-WANs. Specifically, how would IETF-based solutions benefit them?
- Path Layer UDP Substrate (PLUS): The BoF discussing PLUS had a goal of enabling new protocols robust against packet and Internet flow modification compatible with existing middleboxes
- Low Latency Low Loss Scalable (L4S) throughput: the L4S group worked on coordinating transport mechanisms for both low latency and low loss, keeping it scalable and if IETF standards would be beneficial.
- Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS): this BoF focused on Intelligent Transportation Systems, meaning the use of Internet communication protocols between vehicles.
- Limited Use of Remote Keys (LURK): this group looked at using a secure transport layer to provide access to a website that employs HTTPS without having to copy private keys associated with the site.
- International Meeting Arrangements (IMTG): this BoF focused on IETF requirements for selecting future meeting sites.
Be sure to check out additional details on this BoFs, proposed research groups, other big topics, and in-process working groups and information on the proceedings from the meeting.
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