Below are summaries of several updates on the Internet Research Groups (RGs), as reported during the Technical Plenary at IETF 68.
Anti-Spam RG (asrg)
The asrg published a couple of drafts and had some energetic discussions about them on the mailing list:
- BCP on DNS-Based Blacklists
- Criteria for Proposed Techniques for the Management of Spam
Delay-Tolerant Networking Research Group (dtnrg)
There is a meeting planned in Dublin on 21-22 May 2007 for the purpose of making progress in the areas of routing, key management, and applications. The document titled DTN Architecture is in the RFC Editor queue. Another document, titled DTN Bundle Protocol Spec, has finished Internet Research Steering Group (IRSG) review. In addition, the RG review on LTP, a transport protocol for interplanetary-scale delays, has been finished.
End-Middle-End Research Group (eme)
The eme RG has circulated the first draft of a requirements document and is planning to meet at IETF 69 in Chicago.
End-to-End Research Group (end2end)
The End-to-End Research Group met at University College London, on 26-27 February 2007. The agenda included a half day revisiting the topic of congestion control. Again, some of the leadership of the Congestion Control Research Group and other experts on the subject joined and led a discussion on the most challenging problems in this space. The group spent another half day in discussion of future network architecture, including reports on the NSF FIND program and the Eiffel effort in Europe, and held additional discussion on the nature of architecture, the scope of the term network, the question of what it means (or whether one ought) to be doing so-called architecture research, and other related questions. The meeting concluded with several talks on miscellaneous topics, including revisiting an extension to the end-to-end questions.
Host Identity Protocol Research Group (hip)
The hip RG met in Prague during IETF 68 to discuss such issues as Lightweight HIP and HIP & Mobility. A number of topics-including Application Programming Interface (API), Network Address Translation (NAT), and other application drafts-have been moved to the IETF HIP WG. The stability of HIP implementations is improving. The RG is now concentrating more on experiments.
Internet Congestion Control Research Group (iccrg)
The iccrg met in Los Angeles on 12-13 February 2007. The RG is working with the IETF Transport Area directors on evaluating and publishing the congestion control proposals. It is also developing a draft providing an overview of existing congestion-control-related RFCs. Many other issues are currently being discussed on the mailing list, such as fairness concepts and corruption loss. A meeting on these topics is planned for IETF 69 in Chicago in June.
Internet Measurement Research Group (imrg)
The imrg is planning to hold a workshop on 4 October 2007 to discuss classifying traffic by application or application type regardless of whether standard ports, tunnelling, or encryption is employed in an attempt to evade classification. Watch the IMRG and IPPM mailing lists for an announcement.
IP Mobility Optimisation Research Group (mobopts)
The IRTF RFC 4651 – A Taxonomy and Analysis of Enhancements to Mobile IPv6 Route Optimisation – was published recently. The document, titled Unified L2 Abstractions for Fast Handovers, has completed RG review. The group is now working on location privacy, multicast, and mobility as well as policy implications on mobility.
Network Management Research Group (nmrg)
The RG organised a workshop in October 2006 to identify network management research challenges for the next five years. See a workshop summary in the plenary report. The group is also finalising a draft on Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) trace exchange formats and considerations. During its meeting at IETF 68, the group discussed adaptive monitoring work that permits trade-offs between overhead and accuracy.
Peer-to-Peer Research Group (p2prg)
A group member has authored a Survey of Research toward Robust Peer-to-Peer Networks. Also, the RG is involved in a very active discussion on a P2P session initiation protocol (SIP).
Routing Research Group (rrg)
The Routing RG has been rechartered and has two new co-chairs: Lixia Zhang and Tony Li. The RG met during IETF 68 and is now discussing goals and proposals for new routing and addressing architectures. (See also More ROAP)
Scalable, Adaptive Multicast Research Group (samrg)
The samrg held an interim meeting in January 2007 at the workshop on Peer-to-Peer Multicasting (P2PM 07). There are currently three active drafts: problem statement, requirements, and hybrid framework. The group is also doing some preliminary experimental work on PlanetLab.
Transport Modelling Research Group (tmrg)
The tmrg submitted a Metrics document to the IRSG to be considered as an Informational RFC.
The IRTF as a whole is currently revising the IRTF RFC review and publication process.
For more information about the IRTF, please see www.irtf.org.