Category Archives: Internet Engineering Task Force

NTIA Request for Information for IANA services

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 22 February 2006 None comments
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The NTIA is requesting information from potential bidders to perform the IANA tasks. The IANA contract expires at the end of March 2006. The timeframe is only surprising in that this should have happened earlier.
The IANA function of ICANN is the part that has been the less crontroversal, with the notable exception of some key missing cctld reports. We should keep in mind that the IANA is responsible for a lot more than just country code allocation in the DNS. It manages the very critical IP address space. It is also in charge of keeping and allocating many other things from TCP and UDP port numbers to SNMP entreprise UIDs. As such, the IANA is the numbering secretariat of the IETF. In the end, it should return where it belongs, ie under the ISOC/IETF umbrella.

But the one main question of course is if the DoC is allowed to do what it does at all. Does the US government “own” the Internet ? Is there an undisputed proof of ownership ? An international treaty granting this right to the US government ?
If not, it is not in a position to launch such a process on a good it does not own.

20th anniversary of the IETF

Posted by Administrator on 16 January 2006 None comments
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Today, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Society (ISOC) celebrate the 20th anniversary of the IETF, the world’s leading Internet standards development body.The first IETF meeting was held on the afternoon of January 16, 1986, in San Diego, California. As a community-driven activity the IETF went on to pioneer a unique, open process for standards development. Open to all, and based on principles such as “rough consensus and running code”, the IETF has enabled the development of standards that have supported every aspect of the Internet’s phenomenal growth.

“The IETF is unique,” said Brian Carpenter, IETF Chair. “Unlike other standards bodies, there is very little in the way of formal hierarchy and there are no membership requirements or fees. The IETF welcomes broad participation by anyone interested in the future technical evolution and stability of the Internet – and IETF standards are available to all, without charge.”

“The success of the IETF has largely been due to a pragmatic, consensus-based approach to technology standards development,” noted Lynn St. Amour, President and CEO of the Internet Society (ISOC). “Many of the principles of cooperation and collaboration that were developed in the IETF are now being successfully applied in other global forums. ISOC is proud to be associated with the IETF – we value its members’ accomplishments over the last 20 years and look forward to celebrating these achievements over the course of 2006.”

About the root servers

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 1 August 2005 None comments
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Karl Auerbach has an interesting piece about the root server operators with regard to WGIG’s comments that they lack a formal relationship. At the ICANN meeting in Luxembourg, Daniel Karrenberg of RIPE, did not see what the issues are. He argues that the root server operators are already accountable to the body hosting them. That may be true, but are they accountable to the Internet community at large ?

According to Auerbach, there are issues with some root server operators, whose priority might at times conflict with the stability of the Internet. This could be the case of the G and H root servers, operated by the US army, or private companies, tempted to mine through the root server queries to gain commercially useful data. Obviously, this has not yet happened but it is not a unthinkable scenario.  Take as an example how the public GPS signals were degraded on purpose at some time to make them less precise for strategic reasons. 

All of the current root server operations do it as a service to the Internet community, but it is usually not their main task. What would happen to the stability of the Internet if these bodies shift priorities ?

63rd IETF – Paris, FRANCE

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 31 July 2005 None comments
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The agenda is here

MEETING SITE:
Le Palais des Congrès
2, Place de la Porte Maillot
75017 Paris Cedex 17
France

Microsoft pushes Sender-ID

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 24 June 2005 None comments
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Seems like Microsoft wishes to once again push forward its proprietary technologies.From next November its Hotmail and MSN e-mail services will start to tag messages with no Sender-ID as spam.

Sender-ID was proposed to the IETF Marid working group last year by Microsoft. However, the working group refused it because it is covered by a patent. MS was willing to give free access (for how long ?) to its technology to others but the open source community said they was no way they could incorporate this into open source software implementations. As a result, the Marid group disbanded with no agreement.

The Internet is based on open standards. Sender-ID is not. So, from next November, I intend to refuse all mail coming from Hotmail.* and MSN.* and suggest the poor owners of these e-mail addresses to go look elsewhere. After all, there are enough free services available, from Yahoo, Gmail and many others.

Update: it seems the IESG has approved Sender-ID on 24th June. It is not yet clear how the patent issue will be handled.