IETF News

IRTF Update

By: Lars Eggert

Date: March 6, 2015

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During IETF 91 in Honolulu, four out of the eight chartered Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) research groups (RGs) held meetings:

  • Information-Centric Networking (ICNRG)
  • Internet Congestion Control (ICCRG)
  • Software-Defined Networking (SDNRG)
  • Network Coding (NWCRG)

In addition to the meetings of already-chartered research groups, a proposed research group on Datacenter Latency Control (DCLCRG) held its second public meeting.

Another proposed research group, Network Function Virtualization (NFVRG), also held a public meeting. They subsequently held an interim meeting at the IEEE Globecom conference in Austin, Texas, in December 2014. Following both of these successful meetings, the NFVRG was officially chartered in January 2015; its charter page and additional information is available at https://irtf.org/nfvrg.

Prior to IETF 91, the Global Access to the Internet for All (GAIA) research group was also chartered. GAIA did not meet at IETF 91, but instead held two interim meetings: October 2014 in Cambridge, UK, and December 2014 with the Association for Computing Machinery Symposium on Computing for Development (ACM DEV) conference in Berkeley, California. GAIA will meet again at IETF 93 in Prague.

Since IETF 90, no new Request for Comments (RFCs) were published on the IRTF RFC Stream. This is not unusual.

At the IRTF Open Meeting at IETF 91, the final three winners of the third Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP) of 2014 presented their research.

  • Sharon Goldberg discussed threats when BGP RPKI authorities are faulty, misconfigured, compromised, or compelled to misbehave.
  • Misbah Uddin talked about matching and ranking for network search queries to make operational data available in real time to management applications.
  • Tobias Flach presented novel loss recovery mechanisms for Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) that minimize timeout-driven recovery.

The nominations period for the 2015 ANRP awards closed in October 2014. There were 39 eligible submissions, out of which the selection committee picked five award winners for 2015. The ANRP is awarded for recent results in applied networking research that are relevant for transitioning into shipping Internet products and related standardization efforts. The five winners for 2015 will present their work at the three IRTF Open Meetings during the year.

Stay informed about these and other happenings by joining the IRTF discussion list at www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/irtf-discuss.