7 September 2017 - At ION Conference Durban, South Africa, Kevin Meynell discusses what's happening at the IETF in the world of Internet standards, and how you can get involved in the process.

1. Internet Society © 1992–2017
Internet Standards and how to get involved
What’s Happening at the IETF?
Kevin Meynell
Content & Resource Manager
meynell@isoc.org
7 September 2017
Presentation title – Client name
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2. Disclaimer
Two important points:
No-one really speaks for the IETF
I am speaking about the IETF as an individual participant
https://trac.tools.ietf.org/group/iesg/trac/wiki/SpeakingForIetf
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3. Mission of the IETF
Make the Internet work better by producing
high quality, relevant technical documents
that influence the way people
design, use, and manage the Internet
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4. The Internet is a global community
— First meeting in 1986
— Large open international community of network engineers, operators, vendors
and researchers concerned with development and smooth operation of the
Internet
— Volunteers participate on an individual basis to develop and refine protocols that
are useful to operators, manufacturers and vendors utilising the Internet who
support the work of the IETF
— Produce open standards known as Request for Comments (RFCs)
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5. IETF Standards make the Internet work
TCP/IP
— IPv4 (RFC791) and IPv6
(RFC2460…)
— TCP (RFC675…) and UDP
(RFC768)
E-Mail
— SMTP (RFC5321), IMAP
(RFC3501)
Network and Routing
— BGP (RFC4271), OSPF 5
DNS
— DNS (RFCs 1034, 1035…)
— DNSSEC (RFCs 4033, 4034 &
4035)
— DANE (RFCs 6698, 7671…)
Web
— HTTP (RFC2616…)
Security
— TLS (RFCs 5246 & 6176)

6. The Internet Engineering Task Force
— http://www.ietf.org/
— Anyone can participate in the mailing lists and discussions
— Anyone can submit a ‘draft’ document
(known as an Internet Draft or I-D)
— Working Groups debate and discuss drafts
— Documents progress through the standards process to become RFCs
— Primary venue for all communication is e-mail
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7. Working Groups and Areas
— 134 Working Groups
– Each working group has 2 or 3 Co-Chairs
— Working Groups have a Charter that defines:
– Purpose
– Deliverables
– Timeframe
— Working Groups are created, re-chartered and concluded
— Activities organized into 7 Areas
– Each area has 2 or 3 Area Directors (ADs)
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8. IETF Areas - http://www.ietf.org/iesg/area.html
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• Application protocols and architectures
• Real-time (and non-real-time) communication
Applications and Real-Time (ART)
• Mechanisms related to data transport on the Internet
• Congestion control
Transport (TSV)
• Routing and signalling protocols
Routing
(RTG)
• IPv4/IPv6, DNS, DHCP, VPNs, mobility
Internet
(INT)
• Network management
• Operations: IPv6, DNS, security, routing
Operations and Management (OPS)
• Security protocols and mechanisms, including cryptography
Security
(SEC)
• Activities focused on supporting and updating IETF processes
General
(GEN)

9. Working Groups - by Area
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ART, 40
GEN, 1
INT, 19
OPS, 17
RTG, 25
SEC, 19
TSV, 13

10. IETF Meetings
— Three times each year
— Move around the world to different locations
— Continuation of discussions on e-mail lists
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11. IETF 99: 16-21 July 2017, Prague, Czech Republic
— http://www.ietf.org/meeting/99/
— 1,232 on-site participants from 50+ countries
— 6 from South Africa
— IETF Hackathon and Codesprint (15-16 July 2017)
Held to encourage developers to discuss, collaborate and develop utilities,
ideas, sample code and solutions that show practical implementations of IETF
standards
— ISOC posts about IETF 99 at:
– https://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/blog/tag/ietf99/
– https://www.internetsociety.org/rough-guide-ietf99/ 11

12. Next Meeting: IETF 100
— 11-17 November 2017, Singapore
https://www.ietf.org/meeting/100/
— Remote participation available:
– Audio streams
– Web conferencing systems
– Jabber chat rooms
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13. Challenge for Africa regarding the IETF
— IETF awareness is low in the region
— Low number of attendees
— Low participation
— Less than 20 RFCs authored by Africans (Out of more than 8,000)
— Little research on Internet in Universities
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14. IETF Africa Initiative
— Objectives:
– To increase the IETF’s visibility in Africa
– To promote open standards on the continent
– Develop a strong community of individuals who contribute to the Internet
Standards development process at the IETF
— Mailing List (~200 participants):
– https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf_africa
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15. 2017 Activities
– Viewing hubs for IETF 99 in Prague (8 hubs in 7 countries)
– IETF Hackathons (bring together engineers) – 27-28 May 2017, Nairobi
• http://hackathon.internetsummitafrica.org
– Africa IETF Meetings at Chicago & Prague IETFs – 40 total participants
– Working with Universities and NRENs to include IETF materials in University
Curricula
– Produce short IETF materials for the region (available on the Hackathon
website)
– Forthcoming webinars: Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication, IDentity Enabled
Networks (IDEAS) 15

16. IETF Fellowship Programme
Fellowships available to enable people to attend IETF meetings
http://www.internetsociety.org/what-we-do/education-and-leadership-
programmes/ietf-and-ois-programmes/internet-society-fellowship
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17. IETF Policy Programme
Fellowships available for regulators to attend IETF meetings and learn about
IETF standards and processes
https://www.internetsociety.org/what-we-do/education-and-leadership-
programmes/ietf-and-ois-programmes/internet-society-fellowship-5
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18. IPv6 Activities
— IPv6 now common across most working groups
— Some key groups:
– IPv6 Operations (v6ops) WG – provides operational guidance on deploying
and operating IPv6 in new and existing networks.
– IPv6 Maintenance (6man) WG – upkeep and advancement of IPv6 protocol
specifications and addressing architecture.
– Home Networking (homenet) WG – developing networking protocols for
small residential networks.
– Sunsetting IPv4 (sunset4) WG – discusses transition of IPv4 to IPv6 with
view to deprecating IPv4.
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19. DNS/DNSSEC Activities
— DNS Operations (dnsop) WG – provides operational guidance on DNS
software and services, administration of DNS zones, and DNSSEC.
— DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (dane) WG - developing
mechanisms and techniques to allow establishment of cryptographically secured
communications using information in the DNS.
— DNS PRIVate Exchange (DPRIVE) WG – developing mechanisms to provide
confidentiality to DNS transactions using TLS and/or DTLS.
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20. Routing Activities
— Secure Inter-Domain Routing (sidr) WG – improving the security of the routing
infrastructure through the RPKI and BGPSEC specifications
— SIDR Operations (sidrops) WG – developing operation guidance on deploying
and operating SIDR in new and existing networks.
— Global Routing Operations (grow) WG – considers the operational problems
with the IPv4 and IPv6 global routing systems,including route leaks.
— Inter-Domain Routing Working Group (idr) WG – improving the robustness
and scalability of BGP by IPv4 and IPv6.
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21. Trust, Identity and Privacy Activities
— Transport Layer Security (tls) WG – developing a cryptographic protocol to
provide privacy and data integrity between communicating computer
applications.
— Using TLS in Applications (uta) WG - developing definitions for using TLS
with application protocols, best practices for clients and servers, and guidance
for developers.
— Automated Certificate Management Environment (acme) WG – developing
REST-based specifications for automating digital certificate issuance, validation,
revocation and renewal. The basis of the Let’s Encrypt service.
— Public Notary Transparency (trans) WG – developing mechanisms to allowing
detection of mis-issued certificates.
— CURves, Deprecating and a Little more Encryption (curves) WG –
developing new cryptographic security, including new algorithms for DNSSEC
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22. Summary
— The IETF makes the Internet work better
— It has a fundamental role in Internet administration
— It has international scope, but local relevance
— It has an open, inclusive and well-established structure
— Your participation is critical to the success of the IETF
— More information:
http://www.ietf.org/newcomers.html
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23. Visit us at
www.internetsociety.org
Follow us
@internetsociety
Galerie Jean-Malbuisson 15,
CH-1204 Geneva,
Switzerland.
+41 22 807 1444
1775 Wiehle Avenue,
Suite 201, Reston, VA
20190-5108 USA.
+1 703 439 2120
Thank you.
http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy36
0/
deploy360@isoc.org
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