Minutes interim-2016-iab-11 2016-04-07
minutes-interim-2016-iab-11-20160407-00

Minutes of the 2016-04-07 IAB Business Meeting
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Present:

• Jari Arkko (IETF Chair)
• Ralph Droms
• Mat Ford (ISOC Liaison)
• Ted Hardie
• Joe Hildebrand
• Russ Housley
• Lee Howard
• Suresh Krishnan (IESG Liaison)
• Cindy Morgan (IAB Executive Administrative Manager)
• Erik Nordmark
• Robert Sparks
• Andrew Sullivan (IAB Chair)
• Dave Thaler
• Brian Trammell
• Martin Thomson
• Suzanne Woolf

Guests:

• Olaf Kolkman (ISOC)
• Ari Keränen (T2TRG Chair)
• Carsten Bormann (T2TRG Chair)

Regrets:

• Mary Barnes
• Marc Blanchet
• Lars Eggert (IRTF Chair)

1. IRTF Review: Thing-to-Thing Research Group (T2TRG)

Carsten Bormann and Ari Keränen updated the IAB on the current

activities of the Thing-to-Thing Research Group.

There were several previous attempts to start something like an Internet of Things Research Group, but those attempts failed because the scope was too big. The current scope of the T2TRG includes:

• Open research issues in turning a true “Internet of Things” into reality
  • Internet where low-resource nodes (“things”, “constrained nodes”) can communicate among themselves and with the wider Internet
• Focus on issues with opportunities for IETF standardization
  • Start at the IP adaptation layer
  • End at the application layer with architectures and APIs for communicating and making data and management functions, including security

So far, T2TRG has held a number of meetings (including several before they were officially chartered); they have co-located with both the IETF and the W3C. There are three documents currently in progress on REST and security, and the RG has worked on outreach to other organizations such as OCF and the Bluetooth SIG.

Future plans include continuing work on the documents and outreach. T2TRG looks to co-locate their meetings with good research venues and open-source activity; they are planning to start with the RIOT summit in July 2016. The RG hopes to have more work on the benchmark and reference scenarios by the end of 2016.

Carsten Bormann noted that the IAB has organized workshops on IOT in the past that have been helpful, and that the T2TRG would like to see more of these. T2TRG would like to improve the synergies between the IAB IOT activities and the T2TRG, such as by being involved in workshop planning, or having joint topic discussions.

Carsten Bormann reported that the RG has an active group of participants, but they are looking for more contributors from the academic sector. Brian Trammell asked what would help with the academic outreach. Carsten replied that they have been looking for good research venues with which to co-locate; if the IAB knows of other specific venues T2TRG should be looking at, please let the chairs know.

Dave Thaler noted that some other organizations might want a formal liaison relationship, but the IRTF does not have liaison relationships. Dave took an action to find out whether OCF fits the liaison criteria for the IETF.

2. IAB Participation in IAB Workshops

Robert Sparks observed that there has been a trend over the last several IAB workshops of the workshops being relatively exclusive to IAB members with expertise in the workshop topic. Pointing out that the IAB job descriptions says that IAB members should be staying abreast of emerging trends, Robert asked if having workshops where the only IAB members who are invited are already experts in the subject was the right trend.

Jari Arkko noted that in several cases, part of the issue was that there is a limited size group for workshops before the workshop becomes difficult to manage. There is a need to balance the number of IAB and IESG members with the rest of the workshop participants.

Suzanne Woolf stated that while she understands that need for balance, the IAB may not be fulfilling the purpose of having IAB workshops if the IAB members who are interested can’t be there.

Dave Thaler said that for the recent IOTSI workshop, IAB and IESG members had to submit position papers, including those who were on the workshop program committee. In the IOTSI case in particular, educating the IAB about the topic was not one of the workshop goals.

Ted Hardie noted that there are different workshop styles, and that part of the workshop planning should be to think about what would be the ideal number of people to have in the room; otherwise, it comes across as a resource constraint (i.e., “the workshop can have 30 people because the room holds 30 people”).

Andrew Sullivan suggested that the IAB consider three things when planning workshops:

1. How many people should be at the workshop?
2. Would the topic be better served by holding a BOF at an IETF meeting instead of a workshop?
3. Is the trend toward workshops of 30-45 a legitimate restriction, or are there other workshop models to consider?

Brian Trammell took an action item to update the IAB’s workshop guidelines wiki page to reflect the outcomes of this conversation.

3. Special Names Issues

Suzanne Woolf updated the IAB on activities in the DNSOP WG. The WG is working on a problem statement for a special use names registry; they will not talk about solution space until they have a problem statement. She noted that reinterpreting RFC 2860, “Memorandum of Understanding Concerning the Technical Work of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority,” is not within the WG’s remit, but that the IAB may get questions about that.

Ted Hardie suggested that it might be useful to have written guidelines about when it is architecturally necessary to split the name space, and when it is only done so for convenience. Erik Nordmark asked what such a statement would look like. Ted replied that it would say things like the solution must allow for faceted name space to be used in protocols, and the protocol slot must be designed to handle a tuple. Suzanne Woolf said that this sounds like follow up from the Alternative Resolution Contexts for Internet Naming (ARCING) BOF.

4. ETSI Next Generation Protocols ISG

Ralph Droms reported that he was given a participant form to fill out before he could join the mailing list for the ETSI NGP ISG, which was not the desired result. He suggested taking the issue to the Liaison Oversight Program and starting work to set up a formal liaison relationship with ETSI.