IETF News

IRTF Update – July 2011

By: Lars Eggert

Date: July 6, 2011

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On behalf of the Internet Reseach Task Force (IRTF), I am pleased to report that of the 24 nominations received for the first award of the Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP), two submissions were awarded the Applied Networking Research Prize. Each submission was reviewed by two to four members of the selection committee, according to a diverse set of criteria, including scientific excellence and substance, timeliness, relevance, and potential impact on the Internet.

The awardees are Mattia Rossi for his research into reducing BGP traffic[1] and Beichuan Zhang[2] for his research into “green” traffic engineering.

Both researchers have been invited to present their findings at the IRTF Open Meeting, to be held during IETF 81, 24–29 July 2011, in Quebec City, Canada.

Future Calls for Nominations

A call for nominations will be issued this summer targeting IETF 82 in Taipei, Taiwan, in November 2011. For 2012, we are considering switching to a yearly nomination/award cycle, with a call for nominations in late 2011 that will cover all three IETF meetings planned for 2012.

Those interested in receiving future calls for ANRP nominations should subscribe to the IRTF-Announce mailing list. You are also encouraged to join the Internet Society (http://www.InternetSociety.org/get-involved) to stay informed of other networking research initiatives.

About the ANRP

The ANRP is awarded for recent results in applied networking research that are relevant for transitioning into shipping Internet products and related standardization efforts. Researchers with relevant, recently published results are encouraged to apply for this prize, which offers the opportunity to present and discuss their work with the engineers, network operators, policymakers, and scientists who participate in the IETF and the IRTF. Third-party nominations for this prize are also encouraged. The goal of the ANRP is to recognize the best new ideas in networking and bring them to the IETF and IRTF, especially in cases where they would not otherwise see much exposure or discussion.

The Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP) consists of the following:

  • a cash prize of USD 500
  • an invitation to speak at the IRTF Open Meeting
  • a travel grant to attend the week-long IETF meeting that covers airfare, hotel, registration, and stipend
  • recognition at the IETF plenary
  • an invitation to related social activities
  • the potential for additional travel grants to future IETF meetings, based on community feedback

The ANRP will be awarded three times per year, in conjunction with the three annual IETF meetings.

Applicants must nominate a peer-reviewed, recently-published, original journal, conference or workshop paper. Both self nominations (nominating one’s own paper) and third-party nominations (nominating someone else’s paper) are encouraged. The nominee must be one of the main authors of the nominated paper.

The nominated paper should provide a scientific foundation for possible future IETF engineering work or IRTF experimentation, analyze the behavior of Internet protocols in operational deployments or realistic testbeds, make an important contribution to the understanding of Internet scalability, performance, reliability, security or capability, or otherwise be of relevance to ongoing or future IETF or IRTF activities.

Applicants must briefly describe how the nominated paper relates to these goals, and are encouraged to describe how presentation of these research results will foster their transition into new IETF engineering or IRTF experimentation, or otherwise seed new activities that will have an impact on the real-world Internet.

The goal of the ANRP is to foster the transitioning of research results into real-world benefits for the Internet. Therefore, applicants must indicate that they (or the nominee, in case of third-party applications) are available to attend the respective IETF meeting in person and in its entirety.

Nominations for the ANRP are not considered to be contributions to the IETF. However, the invited talks at the IRTF Open Meeting are considered to be contributions to the IETF, and the IETF “Note Well” does apply to them.

Selection Process

A small selection committee composed of individuals who are knowledgeable about the IRTF, IETF, and the broader networking research community will evaluate the submissions against the selection criteria. The goal is to select one or two submissions for the ANRP during each application period. All applicants will be notified by email.

The current ANRP selection committee includes:

  • Mark Allman, ICIR
  • Lou Berger, LabN
  • Ross Callon, Juniper
  • Lars Eggert, Nokia Research Center
  • Olivier Festor, INRIA
  • Mat Ford, the Internet Society
  • Andrei Gurtov, HIIT
  • Al Morton, AT&T Laboratories
  • Bruce Nordman, LBL
  • Jörg Ott, Aalto University
  • Stefano Previdi, Cisco
  • Martin Stiemerling, NEC Laboratories

The ANRP is supported by the Internet Society as part of its Internet Development and Evolution Awards Programme, in coordination with the IRTF.


[1]. Geoff Huston, Mattia Rossi, and Grenville Armitage. A Technique for Reducing BGP Update Announcements through Path Exploration Damping. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), Vol. 28, No. 8, pp. 1271–1286, October 2010

[2]. Mingui Zhang, Cheng Yi, Bin Liu, and Beichuan Zhang. GreenTE: Power-Aware Traffic Engineering. Proc. IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), pp. 21–30, October 2010

This article was posted on 2 August 2011