As reported at the last IETF, the IRTF is reaching out to the research community. In order to attract more researchers to actively work in the IRTF, an article was published in the ACM Computer Communication Review:
http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigcomm/ccr/archive/2005/october/p69-falk.pdf
In the meantime two new Research Groups have been created:
Transport Modelling (TMRG)
This Research Group will develop drafts on how to evaluate congestion control mechanisms and simulation & testbed scenarios. It is further planning to produce documents on best current practices and admission control mechanisms. Sally Floyd will be chairing the group.
Internet Congestion Control (ICCRG)
The ICC Research Group is chaired by Srinivasan Keshav and Mark Handley and is extected to work on a roadmap on congestion control.
In addition to that there are currently ten Research Groups active in the IRTF:
ASRG: Anti-Spam RG (chair: John Levine)
The group is currently writing a draft on using the DNS to distribute blacklists and whitelists. It is further planned to work on measurements on if/how e-mail message mutation breaks a signature-related to Domain Keys Identified Mail (dkim).
CFRG: Crypto Forum Research Group (chairs: David McGrew, Ran Canetti)
CFRG is currently working on an improved variant of the SHA-1 hash function and is evaluating randomised hash function and key derivation proposals. It is also reviewing the UMAC message authentication code.
DTNRG: Delay Tolerant Networking Research Group (chair: Kevin Fall)
This RG is in the process of finalising the DTN architecture and protocol specs. It has recently requested a provisional URI prefix ‘dtn’ from IANA. It is now transitioning from architecture and design to more testing and trials. A DTN workshop took place at SIGCOMM05 which was attended by about 60 people.
end2end: End-to-End Research Group
Bob Braden has retired as E2ERG chair after a 20 year tenure. Craig Partridge and Karen Sollins will act as interim chairs. Bob will continue to run the end2end mailing list and will stay on the IRSG as an ad-hoc member.
HIP: Host Identify Payload Research Group (chairs: Andrei Gurtov, Tom Henderson)
This group is very active, there are currently 6 revised drafts. It is likely that some topics from the hip RG will migrate into a re-chartered hip WG.
MobOpts: Mobility Optimisation Research Group (chairs: Radjeev Koodli, William Arbaugh)
This RG completed its work on “Advances in Mobile IPv6 Route-Optimized Communication”. The group is now busy building testbeds and investigating the following issues:
- Link-assisted Fast Handovers
- Location Privacy with Mobility
- Network-introduced Handovers
NMRG: Network Management Research Group (chair: Jürgen Schönwälder)
There will be a RG meeting in January in Oslo or Stockholm. The agenda will cover “promise theory” and P2P approaches to network management. The group is also involved in network management traffic measurements.
RRG: Routing Research Group (chair: Avri Doria)
The RRG has a new co-chair: Dan Massey from the University of Colorado. A number of new RG topics are under consideration: from proposals for improving convergence times to new routing architectures. The group is planning to meet at INFOCOM in Barcelona to increase participation from the research community.
There are two more IRTF research groups: the IMRG: Internet Measurements RG (chair: Mark Allman) and the P2PRG: Peer-to-Peer RG (Co-chairs: Bill Yeager and Bobby Bhattacharjee).
We continue to discuss the possiblity of a research group on small-group multicast.
The Routing RG had a meeting with the IAB to review the status of the research. Aaron has also been working with the IETF attorney to find out if the IETF IPR policy could be applied to the IRTF.
Finally, the IRTF started to use the Friday afternoon slots for RG meetings. At this IETF the Host Identify Protocol Research Group (hiprg) met.