IETF In Italy History and Future View

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IETF In ItalyHistory and Future View

• Claudio Allocchio
• GARR
• Claudio.Allocchio_at_garr.it

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IETFInternet Engineering Task Force
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IETFWhat is it?

• An International Open, Non-Membership
  Organisation
• It is Constitued under the ISOC Legal Umbrella
• An IETF member is anybody who subscribe to one of
  the IETF mailing lists and take part in the
  discussion
• No subscription/acceptance procedures
• Many IETF members never went to an IETF meeting,
  nevertheless they make very useful contributions
  to the IETF work

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IETFWhat is its Scope?

• International Body to define Internet Standards,
  Informational and Procedural Documents
• IETF collaborates with the other International
  Standard Bodies (ITU, W3C, IEEE, ISO, ETSI...) to
  avoid overlaps and duplications
• IETF does NOT prepare Policy Regulations !
• a domain name is what is defined in RFC 1035
• IETF requires products interworking, but does not
  make nor endorse ANY product

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IETFThe IETF Motto

• We reject kings, presidents and voting. We
  believe in rough consensus and running code

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IETFWorking Groups

• Working groups, each with a specific charter and
  a specifc scope and limited life
• produce techincal specification on a specific
  topic
• revise the technical specifications
• control the actual implementations status and
  interworking
• progress (or abadon) specifications to Standard
• dissolve when work is finished

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IETFWGs Chairmen

• A Working Group has 2 co-chairmen who
• coordinate and focus the discussion
• keep track of the work (and make the editors and
  authors do their tasks!)
• keep under control the WG (kindly - or roughly
  sometimes...)
• decide when a work is done and should be put
  forward
• decide about the WG feelings (they have the
  yes/no of rough consensus)
• work with Area Directors to keep things working

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IETFAreas and Area Directors

• Current Areas
• Application
• General
• Internet
• Operations and Management
• Routing
• Security
• Sub-ip
• Transport
• User Services

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IETFAreas and Area Directors

• Each Area has 2 Area Directors (ADs)
• follow each WG in their area
• propose documents to IESG for aproval
• they are members of IESG

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IETFInternet Engineering Steering Group

• Decide on pubblication of technical documents
• Check for document and specification coherence
• meets one a week by telephone conference
• has usually a long list of to do things...

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IETFInternet Architecture Board

• Keep track of the overall Internet Architecture
• Decides about possible changes or innovations
• Deal with External World relationships
• Respond to arbitration appeals from members and
  external petitors
• ... gives the way where to go...

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IETF
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The IETF Chairman
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IETFThe RFCs

• NOT all RFCs are STANDARDS !
• Informational RFCs (for example BCPs)
• Experimental Status Specifications
• The Standard Track
• Proposed Standard
• Draft Standard
• Standard (Internet Standard no. xxx)
• Where to get them?
• ftp//ftp.ietf.org/rfc/
• ftp//ftp.nic.it/rfc/

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IETFThe Internet Drafts (I-Ds)

• They are the work in progress documents of the
  IETF
• prepared by WGs (with authors - editors)
• prepared by individuals
• they may change quite dramatically between
  versions
• never believe in one of them too seriously!

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IETFFurhter Readings

• RFC 1718 The TAO of IETF
• a bestseller among newcomers
• http//www.ietf.org/tao.html
• RFC 2026 The IETF Standard Process
• how the documents approval process works
• Steve Coya introductions (top secret slides)
• what you will be told by Steve Coya upon arrival
  on the strange planet

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IETFThe Early Times 1986 - 1990

• 1 Jan 1986 San Diego, CA 21 11 Oct 1988
  Ann Arbour, MI 114
• 2 Apr 1986 Aberdeen, MY 21 12 Jan 1989
  Austin, TX 120
• 3 Jul 1986 Ann Arbour, MI 18 13 Apr 1989
  Cocoa Beach, FL 114
• 4 Oct 1986 Menlo Park, CA 35 14 Jul 1989
  Stanford, CA 217
• 5 Feb 1987 Moffett Field, CA 35 15 Oct 1989
  Honolulu, HI 138
• 6 Apr 1987 Boston, MA 88 16 Feb 1990
  Tallahassee, FL 196
• 7 Jul 1987 McLean, VA 101 17 May 1990
  Pittsburgh, PA 244
• 8 Nov 1987 Boulder, CO 56 18 Jul 1990
  Vancouver, CAN 293
• 9 Mar 1988 San Diego, CA 82 19 Dec 1990
  Boulder, CO 292
• 10 Jun 1988 Annapolis, MY 112

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IETFThe Growth
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IETF1991 The St. Louis Meeting

• 348 attendees 2 Europeans land on IETF planet
• Alf Hansen and Erik Huizer
• nearly nobody noticed it, but our explorers
  reported back an interesting amount of data
  and...
• an incredible piece of news
• North Americans were trying to deploy X.400 !
• ... over X.25, with little success...
• but wanted to deploy X.400 over IP, too !!!
• a rescue mission was organised to drive them
  out of the big problems!

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IETFAtlanta 1991 The Mission (5 out of 387)

• On a very hot and humid day in Georgia
  summertime, while the cotton fields were growing
  and nobody deared to exit from air-conditioned
  areas, Alf Hansen (NO), Erik Huizer (NL), Urs
  Eppenberger (CH), Christian Huitema (FR) and one
  Italian showed up all together at the IETF
  x400ops Working Group
• 5 people out of 15 WG participants 33 !
• What a cultural choc there is intelligent life
  East of the Altantic Ocean!

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IETFAtlanta 1991 Knowing the Natives

• We met the small hard group
• after the brief initial shock, they understood we
  talked the same language
• and we started a lot of collaborations (in a few
  hours X.400 was up and even running acrross the
  North Atlantic)
• Europeans started to write Internet Drafts
• and someone started to write Internet Mail
  Gateways specifications to other messaging systems

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IETFAtlanta 1991 Exploring the Planet

• There were also other interesting topics !
• It looked like anybody knew each other
• everithing was talking about peaches
• there was a Bavarian Village, where the Danish
  flag was flying on top of the Swiss House, and
  a Venice Gondola with little X-mas tree lights
  was flashing in the window of the Dutch House
  among Amsterdam Canal houses...

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IETF1991 - 1993 the small Italian colony

• Jul 1991 1
• Nov 1991 1
• Mar 1992 1
• Jul 1992 2
• Nov 1992 3
• Mar 1993 3
• Jul 1993 6
• Nov 1993 3

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IETF1994 - 1998 the Telecom period

• why dont you organise an IETF meeting in
  Italy?
• IPv6 definition Transport layer WGs experience
  the presence of many TELCO operators, including a
  serious group of T.I. group people (10)
• in other areas the usual suspects remain active

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IETF1999 - the Italian-Americans

• a new flavour appear there are many Italians,
  but they all work in North America (Cisco,
  Nortel, ATT, Digital Equipment, Sun Microsystem,
  HP, MCI, Sprint, Bell,...)
• the TELCO period is over
• just the usual suspects still around

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IETF 50th

• 12 Italians

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IETFWhere are we now?

• still very few Italian partecipants, but a quite
  interesting number of silent listeners on many
  IETF mailing lists
• dont we have any Computer Science research
  activity inside the Protocols Area?
• taking part to IETF work also implies having
  contacts between Industrial and Academic RD
  worlds

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IETFPossible future ?

• from implementers to developers?
• we did it with mobile phones already
• shall we use this know how for Mobility Issues?
• IPv6 and UMTS do we wish to push them?
• the missing killer applications, who will invent
  the next big one?
• where do we put our Culture, Art, etc?
• new protocols, applications and tools?
• we have the hardware, shall we make the
  software?

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IETFSomething for today...

• Lets know what IETF is
• ... where it is going
• ... and discover which interesting activities are
  going on in Italy which could be taken to IETF
• ... and more over lets know each other

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Harald...its all for you!