IETF News

A Newcomer’s Experience

By: Mirko Suznjevic

Date: June 27, 2016

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I attended IETF 87 primarily to participate in the birds-of-a-feather (BoF) for Tunneling Compressed Multiplexed Traffic Flows—a mailing list on which I’m active. I was nervous prior to the meeting. It was both my first IETF meeting and I was giving two presentations: one at the BoF and another on online gaming traffic.

The Internet Society’s morning meetings eased my nervousness by breaking the ice with other fellows and Fellowship program staff. That first contact was very warm and helped calm me. I specifically thank Steve Conte for his advice and guidance. I didn’t expect the people in the IETF to be so approachable, but everyone—from students to highly ranked members from corporations like Cisco—is polite, kind, and willing spare a few moments to answer questions. I talked with a lot of people and received a lot of very good advice regarding my current research and further activities in the IETF. Conversations and the ability to meet with a variety of people were probably the greatest benefits of attending the meeting.

I’m very pleased with the meeting’s outcome: the tutorial was very well received. Although the BoF did not result in creation of a working group, we received a lot of constructive criticism, and we were able to identify issues that need to be addressed in order to advance our work. I also realized what a great opportunity IETF meetings are to meet and talk with people from different parts of the world. Gaining these vastly different perspectives is valuable for researchers like myself and I’m grateful to ISOC’s Fellowship program for enabling my attendance.