IAB report to the community before IETF 98

[IAB Chair <[e-mail]>]

Dear colleagues,

This is the usual IAB report to the community about our activities
since the previous meeting (in this case, since IETF 97 in Seoul).
As ever, we hope that this form allows you to prepare topics you might
want to discuss during the open mic. But of course, if you have views
you want to make known by email, we're easy to reach: send mail to
[e-mail] to reach our public discussion list, and
[e-mail] to reach just the IAB.

The IAB has a few chartered roles. We confirm the appointments to the
IESG and perform standards process oversight and handle appeals. We
also perform architectural oversight (including appointing the IRTF
Chair), we manage the RFC series and the IETF's relationship with
IANA, and we handle liaisons and appointments both to ISOC and to
other organizations. We try to ensure that anything we do is part of
one of these areas of responsibility, and we try to make sure these
are all covered.

Here's what we've been doing since IETF 97.  You can find mention of
each of these on the IAB pages at https://www.iab.org (where there's
more background, too):

    • RFC Format Changes. You've been hearing for some time about
      these. In December, the requirements were published as RFCs
      7990-7998. There remains work to be done in this area, as the
      project shifts to building and testing the tools required, but
      for now, the IAB returns more immediate oversight to the RFC
      Series Oversight Committee. (RFC Series)

    • Appointment to the ISOC Board of Trustees.  The IAB made its
      appointment to the ISOC BoT.  We thank the community for the
      feedback on candidates.  ISOC announces its BoT itself, so look
      for that announcement in the near future. (Liaisons and appointments)

    • Reappointment of Independent Submission Editor.  The IAB
      reappointed Nevil Brownlee as the Independent Submission Editor
      (ISE).  We appreciate Nevil's willingness to serve for another
      year.  (RFC Series)

    • Appointment to IETF Administrative Oversight Committee (IAOC).
      The IAB alternates with the IESG in making 2-year appointments
      to the IAOC.  The IAB appointed Kaveh Ranjbar.  We thank the
      community for the comments on candidates. (Liaisons and appointments)

    • Public comment responses.  The IAB tries to respond to requests
      for comment when it believes that the request impinges on the
      architecture or functioning of the Internet and and that a
      response may be of general use to the community.  Since Seoul
      we commented on a request from ICANN for comment on display of
      RDDS output, a request from ICANN for comment on Identifier
      Technology Health Indicators, and to a request from the United
      States NTIA on Fostering the Advancement of the Internet of
      Things.  The IAB also made a statement on OCSP Stapling.
      (Architectural oversight)

    • Process documents.  Thanks to the IANA Stewardship Transition
      last year, the IAB has some new appointments to make.  We have
      encoded our procedures for making two such appointments in RFCs
      8090 ("Appointment Procedures for the IETF Representatives to
      the Community Coordination Group") and RFC 8128 ("IETF
      Appointment Procedures for the ICANN Root Zone Evolution Review
      Committee"). (Liaisons and appointments)

    • Confirmation of the IESG.  This year, this task was more
      exciting than usual because of people moving around on the
      IESG. (IESG confirmation)
    
        DOCUMENTS

You can always find the documents the IAB has adopted and is working
on at https://datatracker.ietf.org/stream/iab.  

There is one document about the RFC series:

draft-iab-rfc-preservation-04
    Digital Preservation Considerations for the RFC Series (at RFC
    Editor)

There are in process some workshop reports:

draft-iab-carisreport-02
    Coordinating Attack Response at Internet Scale (CARIS) Workshop
    Report (at the RFC Editor)
draft-iab-iotsi-workshop-01
    Report from the Internet of Things (IoT) Semantic Interoperability
    (IOTSI) Workshop 2016
draft-iab-iotsu-workshop-01
    Report from the Internet of Things (IoT) Software Update (IoTSU)
    Workshop 2016 (in community review, nearly done)
draft-nrooney-marnew-report-02
    IAB Workshop on Managing Radio Networks in an Encrypted World
    (MaRNEW) Report (expired but adopted; the new version of the file
    has not been uploaded since Seoul)

The other documents are related to the IAB's architectural functions:

draft-iab-privsec-confidentiality-mitigations-08
    Confidentiality in the Face of Pervasive Surveillance
draft-iab-protocol-transitions-08
    Out With the Old and In With the New: Planning for Protocol
    Transitions (in community review, nearly done)
draft-iab-web-pki-problems-05
    Improving the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for the World Wide
    Web

    PROGRAMS

The IAB organizes its work, for the most part, into programs.  There
are basically two classes: management programs and architectural
programs.  The former are how we handle the oversight of various
things, and the latter are where we do architectural work.  The former
are expected to last as long as the IAB continues to have that
oversight function; the latter last until the IAB has come to a
conclusion on the relevant group of topics, and we expect them to wind
down afterwards.  Programs are listed at
https://www.iab.org/activities/programs/.  As a general rule, each
architectural program has a public mailing list, as well as a
member-specific list.  For subscription instructions, see
https://www.iab.org/iab-mailing-lists/..

We review programs periodically.  In the period since Seoul, we
reviewed the IANA Evolution Program.  The program did a lot of work in
the period prior to the IANA stewardship transition; but with that
event over the IAB determined that we could expect a period of
quiet. Accordingly, the membership of the program has been scaled
back, and the work plan for the program has reverted to the usual
oversight function that was its normal business prior to the
transition work.

The IAB also reviewed the Names and Identifiers Program (INIP).  The
IAB observed that the program had not achieved most of its goals over
its time, and also noted that there did not seem to be the energy and
evidence of progress that might indicate the results would change.
It's worth noting that our discussion of this situation set out a new
presumption for the management of programs.  People have sometimes
made an analogy between programs and IETF working groups, but they
serve different purposes.  Unlike working groups, which have a
procedural function on top of the other functions, IAB programs are
inexpensive to set up and close down.  Therefore, the IAB decided to
close INIP, even though the issues that inspired the program remain
unresolved and even though the IAB continues to think there is a
problem that needs some architectural input.  It appears there are
some other programs that would benefit from similar treatment, and the
IAB will be reviewing those in the near future.

The IAB also reviewed the RFC Series Oversight Committee (RSOC).  This
is an unusual program in that it is formally created by an RFC, but
internally we operate it like any other oversight program.  This
program is functioning well.  The two major work items are any needed
assistance in digesting the format changes, and the RSE RFP and
selection process (which will happen this year).  There was some
discussion of replacing Adam Roach on the RSOC were he to be appointed
as an Area Director, but the IAB decided against it.  There is also a
potentially important thing to draw to community attention: there is a
new guideline for the display of DOIs, and RSOC is unhappy with it.
If the guideline is to be enforced, RSOC plans to recommend
discontinuing the use of DOIs.  More discussion is in the IAB meeting
minutes from 2017-01-11.

We added a new program before IETF 97: the Plenary Planning Program,
to ensure that the IAB component of the IETF plenary is improved.  The
program is fairly new, and this is only the second meeting where its
influence is being felt, so it would be a good time to get feedback
about whether things are getting better.

    OPEN COMMUNICATIONS

For some years, the IAB has had a wiki that it uses for its internal
communications.  Because of the role of the IAB, especially in respect
of appointments and outward-facing activities, that wiki has always
been private to the IAB.  Some materials ought to be handled
privately.

Nevertheless, there are lots of things the IAB discusses that do not
need to be private.  Yet the availability of the private wiki
naturally meant that materials tended to end up there even if they did
not need to be private.

To solve this, the IAB has created a separate, public wiki.  It is at
https://www.iab.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page.  There have been some
teething problems due to accounts not working as expected (and due to
old habits dying hard), but we're working to put any work that does
not need to be private in the public wiki.  

    RENEWAL

IAB terms begin and end with the first IETF meeting of the year, so
this report is the final one from this IAB.  The new IAB will begin in
Chicago, at IETF 98:

Alissa Cooper, IETF Chair, Cisco
Brian Trammell, ETH
Erik Nordmark, Independent
Gabriel Montenegro, Microsoft
Jari Arkko, Ericsson
Jeff Tantsura, Futurewei
Joe Hildebrand, Mozilla
Lee Howard, Independent
Mark Nottingham, Akamai Technologies
Martin Thomson, Mozilla
Robert Sparks, Oracle
Suzanne Woolf, Independent
Ted Hardie, Google

We thank outgoing members Ralph Droms, Russ Housley, Andrew Sullivan,
and Dave Thaler for their service.  At IETF 98, the IAB will also
select its new chair and will announce who it is during the course of
the meeting.

Respectfully submitted,

Andrew Sullivan
For the IAB

-- 
IAB Chair (Andrew Sullivan)
[e-mail]