Call for Papers: IAB Workshop on Stack Evolution in a Middlebox Internet (SEMI)

[IAB Chair <[e-mail]>]

IAB Workshop on Stack Evolution in a Middlebox Internet (SEMI)
26-27 January 2015 – ETH Zürich, Switzerland

The Internet’s transport layer has ossified, squeezed between narrow 
interfaces (from BSD sockets to pseudo-transport over HTTPS) and 
increasing in-network modification of traffic by middleboxes that make 
assumptions about the protocols running through them. This ossification 
makes it difficult to innovate in the transport layer, through the 
deployment of new protocols or the extension of existing ones. At the 
same time, emerging applications require functionality that existing 
protocols can provide only inefficiently, if at all.

To begin to address this problem, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), 
within the scope of its IP Stack Evolution Program, is organizing a 
workshop to discuss approaches to de-ossifying transport, especially 
with respect to interactions with middleboxes and new methods for 
implementing transport protocols. Recognizing that the end-to-end 
principle has long been compromised, we start with the fundamental 
question of matching paths through the Internet with certain 
characteristics to application and transport requirements. Which paths 
through the Internet are actually available to applications? Which 
transports can be used over these paths? How can applications cooperate 
with network elements to improve path establishment and discovery? Can 
common transport functionality and standardization help application 
developers to implement and deploy such approaches in today’s Internet? 
Could cooperative approaches give us a way to rebalance the Internet 
back toward its end-to-end roots?

Topics

For this workshop we would like to consider topics that speak to these 
questions, including the following:

- Development and deployment of transport-like features in application-
  layer protocols
- Methods for discovery of path characteristics and protocol 
  availability along a path
- Methods for middlebox detection and characterization of middlebox 
  behavior and functionality
- Methods for NAT and middlebox traversal in the establishment of end-
  to-end paths
- Mechanisms for cooperative path-endpoint signaling, and lessons 
  learned from existing approaches
- Economic considerations and incentives for cooperation in middlebox 
  deployment

We will explicitly focus on approaches that are incrementally deployable 
within the present Internet.

The outcome of the workshop will be architectural and engineering 
guidance on future work in the area, published as an IAB workshop 
report, based on discussion of proposed approaches; future work will be 
pursued within the IAB Stack Evolution Program. We will also explore 
possible areas for standardization, e.g. new protocols that separate 
signaling to and from on-path devices and common transport semantics 
from the rest of the transport protocol; and for general guidance, e.g. 
how transports as well as middleboxes can be designed and deployed to 
achieve these goals.

Submission Instructions

Attendance at the workshop is by invitation. Prospective participants 
are invited to submit short position papers outlining their views on one 
or more topics related to the scope of the workshop. Position papers 
will be published on the IAB website at: 
http://www.iab.org/activities/workshops/semi/.

Submissions accepted at: 
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=semi2015

Submission Deadline: 31 October 2014

Notification Deadline: 17 November 2014

Workshop Dates: 26-27 January 2015

Sponsored by the Internet Architecture Board, the Internet Society, and 
ETH Zürich. Mirja Kühlewind and Brian Trammell, General Chairs.