Internet Standardization
and the IETF
Fred Baker
IETF Chair
ITU Telecom ‘99
1
Thoughts I would like to
address
• IETF History, Structure, and Procedure
Who’s who in the IETF
• Relations among standards bodies
Who does what and why
• The big problems in the Internet
Ongoing work
How we’re going to solve them
ITU Telecom ‘99
www.ietf.org
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IETF History
ITU Telecom ‘99
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Internet Engineering Task
Force (IETF)
• Historical developer of internet-related
protocols
http://www.ietf.org
Consortium of individuals from
Research,
Education,
Network operators, and
Internet vendors
ITU Telecom ‘99
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Changed IETF composition
and roles
2500
Attendance
2000
1500
1000
Research/Education
primarily US
500
Vendor/International
-500
ITU Telecom ‘99
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43
40
37
34
31
28
25
22
19
16
13
10
7
4
1
0
IETF Number
Actual
www.ietf.org
Avg..
5
Growth of international
involvement in IETF
• Non-US Meetings:
• Principle for
placement of
meetings:
1990: Vancouver
1993: Amsterdam
“If I am doing the work,
the meeting should
sometimes be in my
neighborhood”
• But most work is
done on mailing lists
anyway…
ITU Telecom ‘99
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1994: Toronto
1995: Stockholm
1996: Montreal
1997: Munich
1999: Oslo
2000: Adelaide
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IETF Growth by Country
Netherlands Italy Other
2% 8%
3%
Canada
3%
France
USA
4%
48%
Finland
4%
Germany
5%
Norway UK Sweden Japan
5%
6% 6%
6%
Germany Sweden Other
1.9% 1.8% 5.5%
France
2.0%
Netherlands
2.2%
Canada
3.1%
JAPAN
UK
USA
7.6%
4.2%
71.6%
ITU Telecom ‘99
• December 1996
• July 1999
• 11 Countries
• 33 Countries
www.ietf.org
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IETF Structure
ITU Telecom ‘99
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IETF structures and key
forums
• Internet Architecture Board
• Internet Engineering Steering Group
• Working groups in eight areas
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Internet Architecture Board
(IAB)
• Mission
“Supreme court” on appeals of IESG
decisions
Think tank for future internet activities
• Recent activities
Really worried right now about
•End to end model of the internet
•Impact of wireless communications
ITU Telecom ‘99
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Internet Engineering Steering
Group (IESG)
• Mission
Assure open-ness and adherence to process
Working group chartering and management
“Quality assurance” on specifications
• Activities and trends
Currently drawn into a “privacy” debate
Better addressed in area activities
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Working groups in eight areas
Internet
Routing
Transport
Applications
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Security
Network operations
and management
User services
General
www.ietf.org
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Internet
• Mission
IP/foo specifications
Interface configuration and management
IP developments, mostly IP6
• 15 working groups
Interface mibs, dnsind, dhcp, ipng,
IP/cable|ADSL|IEEE 1394, PPP, ion, ...
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Routing
• Mission
“So how does a packet get there,
anyway?”
• 17 working groups
BGMP, MPLS, MSDP, manet, vrrp, bgp,
ospf, idmr, SNA...
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Transport
• Mission
QoS management
End to End delivery issues
Telephony issues
• 22 working groups
Diff-serv, int-serv, megaco, sigtran,
audio/video, rap, ...
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Applications
• Mission
Infrastructure applications development
and extension
Historical applications
• 26 working groups
Web, LDAP, edi, nntp, smtp, ftp, telnet,
calendaring, mime, etc.
ITU Telecom ‘99
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Security
• Mission
Developing procedures and protocols to
enhance security in the internet
• 15 working groups
Ipsec, pki, transport layer security, web
transaction security, pgp, one time
password, etc...
ITU Telecom ‘99
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Network Operations and
Management (O&M)
• Mission
Making sure there is operational clue looking at the
specifications and procedures
Network management (used to mean SNMP)
Making those two talk with each other
Y2k
• 20 working groups
Snmpv3, policy, various mibs, agent extensibility...
Ngtrans, year2000, mbone deployment, routing policy
system, ...
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User Services
• Mission
Provide documentation of IETF procedures to less
involved communities
• 4 working groups
Responsible use of the net
Web elucidation of internet-related developments
FYI updates
User services
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General
• Mission
If we can’t think of another place to put
it, it goes here
• 1 working group
Poisson: standing rules committee
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Working group summary
• We have ~120 working groups
Not all currently active
• Cover support of infrastructure for
the commercial IP internet
Not too worried about research network,
unless they use the same technology
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IETF Process
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Membership
• IETF members are people
As opposed to nations or companies
• Communications tend to be among
people
As opposed to working groups, boards,
etc.
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Fundamental working
principle
“
We do not worry about
presidents and kings;
We work by rough consensus
and running code
Dr. David C. Clark,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
ITU Telecom ‘99
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”
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Two types of documents
• Internet Drafts
• RFC - “Request for Comments”
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Internet Drafts
• Most analogous to ITU “contributions” and
“working papers”
Not necessarily work items
Half of all internet drafts are simply documents
people have chosen to post
• Types of drafts
Working Group documents
Submissions to working groups
Individual Submissions
ITU Telecom ‘99
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RFCs
• Historical Archive
• Many kinds of
documents
• Standards
Informational
Proposed, Draft, Full
Historical
Best Current
Practice
Experimental
Standards
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Development Process
• Bottom-up
WG charters developed to support work
people want to do
• Development Process
Working groups develop
IESG reviews
RFC Editor publishes
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Relations among
standards bodies
“Anyone who likes legislation or
sausage should watch neither one
being made”
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Baron von Bismarck
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Historical role of various
standards bodies
• Various marketing
fora
• ITU-T
• IEEE
ATM Forum
• ETSI
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ADSL Forum
• W3C
MPLS Forum
• IETF
etc...
www.ietf.org
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Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
• Primarily link layer LAN standards
http://ieee.org/
Especially LAN standards in 802 series
IEEE 802.1 Bridging
IEEE 802.3 CSMA/CD Networks (Ethernet)
IEEE 802.5 Token Ring Networks
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European Telecommunications
Standards Institute (ETSI)
• European Telephony Standards
http://www.etsi.org
GSM Telephones
WAP - Wireless Access Protocol
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World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C)
• Primarily Web services
http://www.w3.org
Headed by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of
HTML
• Developed HTML, XML, etc.
ITU Telecom ‘99
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ITU Telecommunication
Standardization Sector (ITU-T)
• Primarily related to telephony
http://www.itu.int/ITU-T
Consortium of
Telephone companies
Their traditional vendors
ITU Telecom ‘99
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ITU-T Developments
• Specific collaboration:
• Various connector
standards
H.323 uses IETF Data format
X.21, V.35, etc.
• Physical/Link layer network
standards
• Points of possible overlap
with IETF
X.25, Frame Relay, ATM, SDH
• Telephony on specific
substrate
MPLS
IP/ATM
ISO JTC1 voice control
H.32x/H.310
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IP/SDH
IP Telephony call signaling
www.ietf.org
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IETF: Infrastructure protocols
• Some link layer
• Security services
Transport Layer
Security, IPSEC,
ISAKMP
PPP
• Network Layer
IP4, IP6
• Telephony Signaling
Signaling transport
Routing protocols
• Transport Layer
• Quality support
Differentiated Services
TCP, UDP, RTP
Integrated Services
ITU Telecom ‘99
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IETF: Infrastructure
applications
• telnet virtual terminal
protocol
• SNMP management
• SMTP mail
• FTP file transfer
• DNS name services
• HTTP Web transfer
• LDAP Policy services
ITU Telecom ‘99
• and more...
www.ietf.org
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How IETF sees work divided
W3C
IEEE
HTML
Voice/ Video Telephony
Data
HTTP SNMP
Mail
Signaling
UDP
RTP
TCP
Internet Protocol
Ethernet ATM Frame Relay
PPP
MPLS
A variety of physical layers and interfaces Cellular Radio
ETSI
ITU-T
• Applications come from all over
• IETF
Provides network infrastructure
Tends to use interfaces defined by other bodies
ITU Telecom ‘99
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So where is the
Internet going?
“As for the future, your task is not
to foresee, but to enable it.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
ITU Telecom ‘99
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IETF vision for the future
• Short term
Internet as interconnected competing
service providers
• Long term
Internet as universal interconnect
ITU Telecom ‘99
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Internet as interconnected
competing service providers
• Dominated by
Service Providers and
Large enterprises
• A “network of networks” which have
different policies and goals
ITU Telecom ‘99
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Internet as universal
interconnect
• IETF believes that the internet is the
network of tomorrow
Telephone companies seem to agree
But how intelligent a network?
• Would like to see common
procedures and protocols used
throughout
Minimize translation problems
ITU Telecom ‘99
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Growth of IP Traffic
• Email
• Information
search/access
• Subscription
services/“Push”
• Conferencing/
multimedia
Rel. Bit
Volume
250
Traffic Projections for
Voice and Data
Data
(IP)
200
150
Circuit Switched Voice
100
• Video/imaging
“From 2000 on, 80% of Service
Provider Profits Will Be Derived
from IP-Based Services.”
Source: CIMI Corp.
Cross over date
varies with
measuring point
50
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
Source: Multiple IXC Projections
ITU Telecom ‘99
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In summary...
“I came, I saw, I couldn’t believe my eyes”
Julius Caesar,
as portrayed in Asterix in Britain
ITU Telecom ‘99
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When standards collide...
• Increasingly, convergence of Internet and
PSTN networks causes collisions between
the bodies that define their protocols and
procedures
• The solution has to be in finding ways to:
Not compete in standardization
Focus on the problems remaining to be solved
ITU Telecom ‘99
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The place of standards bodies
• Each has its place in the mix
We need to work together on a global basis
• Competition between standards
promotes inability to
Share solutions to common problems
Communicate among subscribers
ITU Telecom ‘99
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