RE: Is IETF is being shunned for new protocol development?

[Dave Thaler <[e-mail]>]

This seems like a good time to remind people about the IAB’s RFC 5218

“What Makes for a Successful Protocol?”  This document was

presented in the Technical Plenary at IETF 70 back in 2007

(slides at https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/70/slides/plenaryt-1.pdf)

 

Slide 30 specifically talked about the fact that “Most of the success

stories are ones which originated outside the IETF, and where

technical quality was not a primary factor in success”, under the heading

“What is the role of the IETF?”.

 

It seems this thread is going back to that topic, so wanted to highlight
this document which was the IAB’s take on it back in 2007, since the
concern is not new.  Some of the takeaways (see the slides and the

RFC for fuller details and conclusions) included that essentially:


* The IETF often (over?) focuses on technical goodness, whereas that’s the

   least important factor (of those surveyed) in success.  Tom’s cited

   reason #3 is along these lines.

* The IETF does have proven open maintenance processes, but that’s the
   second least important factor.  Tom’s cited reason #2 possibly
   contributes to that factor’s low ranking.

* Success stories often occur by starting outside the IETF, and then
   coming into the IETF for v2.  I.e., *new* work starts outside the IETF
   and already-successful work comes into the IETF for longer-term viability.
   That may be the case for the topics Tom refers to.

 

Dave

 

From: Tom Herbert <tom=[e-mail] <mailto:tom=[e-mail]> >
Date: Wednesday, 14 January 2026 at 19:37
To: IETF-Discussion <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]> >
Subject: Is IETF is being shunned for new protocol development?

Hello,

FYI, I would like to share a letter I sent to IAB about a concern that
IETF may be losing relevance particularly in AI networking.
-----
Dear IAB,

I would like to bring to your attention a worrisome trend that IETF is
being shunned as the SDO for developing an standandardizing new >=L3
protocols particularly those needed for networking in AI
infrastructure which is among the hottest segments for new protocol
development.

A good example is the protocols being developed by the Ultra Ethernet
Consortium (UEC). UEC is acting as a new SDO aimed at developing scale
out networking protocols for AI and HPC infrastructure. The name is
misnomer; they are actively developing a suite of L2 to L7 protocols
including an elaborate transport protocol encapsulated in UDP to
support Remote Memory Operations.

Another example is the Open Compute Project. Back in 2024 the
Congestion Signaling draft was posted to the ippm working group.
https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ravi-ippm-csig-01.html. While
the draft has long since expired in IETF, the protocol is well
deployed at least at Google I believe and there is hardware vendor
support for the protocol. Standardization of CSIG is being done in
either OCP (or UEC), but notably not the IETF.

When I ask people  why they're not taking protocols to IETF, they give
three reasons:

1) It takes too long for IETF to do anything

2) The process allows for anyone at anytime to raise objections and
either bring progress to a grinding halt or sink a protocol outright

3) IETF can be too academic and not sufficiently focused on the
realities of the real world

I have seen each of these problems first hand so I do sympathize with
those who are purposely avoiding IETF. On the other hand, I think they
are throwing the "baby out with the bathwater"  so to speak since
these alternate SDOs have yet to show better results. For instance, I
believe the UEC specification would be in much better shape had it
followed a few basic design principles that are espoused by IETF
(here's my article on the problems with UEC protocol specification
https://medium.com/@tom_84912/protocol-types-and-what-was-uec-thinking-66b525765577)

Please take this into consideration, as I do worry that IETF could
start to be left behind in the world of protocol development. I'm not
sure how the concerns can be addressed, maybe there could be something
like a streamlined standardization process for non-Internet wide
protocols like those being developed for AI infrastructure? Also, I
believe there's only one working group for AI, maybe it would make
sense to have a Working Group specifically focused on networking
protocols for AI infrastructure (I would note that OCP has completely
pivoted to be AI focussed and they drew 12,000 people on-site to their
2025 conference-- that is mind blowing).

Thanks,
Tom