[Stackevo] Program review and meeting in BA

[Brian Trammell <[e-mail]>]

Greetings, all,

Last week's program review went well. There were a few immediate outcomes. First, we should modify our program description to reflect the present state of the world; my suggestion for this edit is inline below:


--------- begin new description -

Description
-----------

The IP Stack Evolution program covers various topics in the evolution of IPv4 and IPv6, the transport protocols running over IP, and the overall protocol stack architecture. The program addresses challenges that affect the stack in some way and where the IETF community requires architectural guidance, responding to community requests as well as actively monitoring work within IETF WGs which touch on relevant topics.

There is an observed trend of functionality moving “up the stack”: where the “waist” was once IP, now most applications run over TCP/IP, or even HTTP/TCP/IP; the stack has become increasingly ossified. This is in response both to reduced path transparency within the Internet — middleboxes that limit the protocols of the traffic that can pass through them — as well as insufficiently flexible interfaces for platform and application developers. The emergence of both new application requirements demanding more flexibility from the stack, especially at layer 4, as well as the increasing ubiquity of encryption to protect against pervasive surveillance, provides an opportunity to re-evaluate and reverse this trend.

This program aims to provide architectural guidance, and a point of coordination for work at the architectural level to improve the present situation of ossification in the Internet protocol stack. Where a working group relevant to a particular aspect of IP stack evolution exists, the program will facilitate cross-group and cross-area coordination. The program also produces documents on the IAB stream providing general guidance on and covering architectural aspects of stack evolution.

Active Work
-----------

(1) Discussion of principles for making new protocols within the IP stack deployable, following in part on RFC 5218 “What Makes for a Successful Protocol”.

(2) Definition of principles for the use of encapsulation at various layers within the protocol stack. UDP-based encapsulations are not only useful for evolution above the IP layer, but in many tunneling contexts as well. The probable commonalities among all these applications of encapsulation might be useful in simplifying their implementation, deployment, and use.

(3) Architectural guidance on the interoperability of protocol stacks for use in constrained devices, focusing on issues related to mutually incompatible interactions among application, transport, network, and link layer protocols.

Past Workshops, BoFs, etc.
--------------------------

The Program has organized several workshops, Birds of a Feather sessions, and proposed Research Groups on topics related to its areas of work:

* The IAB workshop on [Stack Evolution in a Middlebox Internet](https://www.iab.org/activities/workshops/semi/) (SEMI) in Zurich, January 2015. Read the Workshop Report, [RFC 7663](https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7754)
* The [Substrate Protocol for User Datagrams](https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/92/spud.html) (SPUD) BoF at IETF 72 in Dallas, March 2015.
* The [Managing Radio Networks in an Encrypted World (MaRNEW)](https://www.iab.org/activities/workshops/marnew/)Workshop in Atlanta, September 2015, together with GSMA.
* The Measurement and Analysis for Protocols (MAP) proposed Research Group has been meeting since IETF 73 in Prague (until IETF 74 in Yokohama as "How Ossified is the Protocol Stack?" (HOPS) proposed RG). Discussion is at <[e-mail]>.

Documents Published
-------------------

* Technical Considerations for Internet Service Blocking and Filtering, ([RFC 7754](https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7754))

This program has itself evolved from the IP Evolution Program, which looked at general architectural issues in the evolution of IPv4 and IPv6 and the overall protocol stack architecture, and produced the following documents:

* IAB Thoughts on IPv6 Network Address Translation (RFC 5902)
* Evolution of the IP Model (RFC 6250)
* Smart Objects Workshop Report (RFC 6574)
* Architectural Considerations of IP Anycast (RFC 7094)
* Report from the IAB Workshop on Internet Technology Adoption and Transition (ITAT) (RFC 7305)

---------   end new description -

Comments on the new description are welcome.

Second, Dave Thaler has started a document for point 1 in the new description: draft-iab-protocol-transitions, which needs some attention from the program. From our minutes in Yokohama:

  The Program agreed to add case studies to draft-thaler-transition-principles:

  - Brian Trammell will write something up on the failure of ECN.
  - Marc Blanchet will write something up for MIME.
  - Mirja Kühlewind will write something up on MPTCP.

(This has now made it into my actual queue for now :) )

Third, the IAB noted that the program might get stuff done (other than organizing workshops etc, at which we're doing an excellent job!) if we clocked the program a bit more frequently. On this point, I'd like to try and schedule one program WebEx call between the Buenos Aires and Berlin IETF, probably in late May. We can talk about this in more detail during the program meeting at lunchtime Monday in BA.

Thanks, cheers,

Brian (program lead hat)