Minutes of the 2023-05-03 IAB Business Meeting & Technical Discussion 1. Administrivia 1.1. Attendance Present: Dhruv Dhody Liz Flynn (IETF Secretariat) Wes Hardaker Cullen Jennings Mallory Knodel Suresh Krishnan Mirja Kühlewind (IAB Chair) Cindy Morgan (IAB Executive Administrative Manager) Karen O'Donoghue (ISOC Liaison) Tommy Pauly Colin Perkins (IRTF Chair) Alvaro Retana Christopher Wood Greg Wood (IETF Director of Communications and Operations) Jiankang Yao Regrets: Roman Danyliw (IESG Liaison) Lars Eggert (IETF Chair) David Schinazi Qin Wu Guests: Wim Degezelle David Frautschy Konstantinos Komaitis Sheetal Kumar Observers: heb oooonduke Vittorio Bertola Marek Blachut Deborah Brungard Carolina Caeiro David Conrad Dominique Lazanski Simon Leinen Xing Li Mark McFadden Arnaud Taddei Niels ten Oever Brian Trammell Yajing Wang 1.2. Agenda bash and announcements No new items were added to the agenda. 1.3. Meeting Minutes The following meeting minutes were approved: • 2023-04-19 business meeting - (draft submitted 2023-04-19) The following meeting minutes remain under review: • 2023-04-26 business meeting - (draft submitted 2023-04-26) 1.4. Action Item Review Done: • 2023-04-26: Lars Eggert to send email to IETF-Announce with the IAB and IESG feedback for the ICANN Board Listening Session. • 2023-04-26: Lars Eggert to send the IAB and IESG feedback for the ICANN Board Listening Session to the ICANN Board. • 2023-04-26: Cindy Morgan and Mirja Kühlewind to document that IAB's past responses and rationale for not making an appointment to the IANA Naming Function Review team in the private wiki. • 2023-04-26: Cindy Morgan to add a question about IETF participation to the ICANN NomCom candidate questionnaire (and follow up with candidate who already returned questionnaire). • 2023-04-26: All to reach out to potential ICANN NomCom Candidates. • 2023-04-26: Mirja Kühlewind to send the proposed response to the Request for Appointment of Members and Liaisons to the Second IANA Naming Function Review (IFR) to the IAB for review. On Hold: • 2021-11-17: Mirja Kühlewind and Cindy Morgan to put together some options for the IAB Website revamp for the IAB to review. (Work progressing in the background) • 2022-11-06: Jari Arkko to update draft-arkko-iab-data- minimization-principle based on the IAB discussion at IETF 115. • 2022-12-07: Cindy Morgan to send a message to arch-d list about possible adoption of draft-arkko-iab-data-minimization- principle once Jari Arkko updates the document and confirms that the message is ready to go. In Progress: • 2022-07-24: Mallory Knodel and Mirja Kühlewind to draft a document outlining the architectural principles that the IAB thinks are important and need to be understood when considering Internet governance. • 2023-03-01: Cullen Jennings, Chris Wood, and Qin Wu to work on a proposal for an IAB workshop on identity management. • 2023-03-08: Mallory Knodel to draft an outline for an IAB response to EU consultation on "sender-pays." • 2023-04-12: All IAB to provide input on the slides for the IETF presentation at RIPE 86 Rotterdam. • 2023-04-19: Mallory Knodel to try and schedule a technical discussion on privacy and censorship for 2023-05-31. • 2023-04-26: Mirja Kühlewind to respond to the Request for Appointment of Members and Liaisons to the Second IANA Naming Function Review (IFR). • 2023-04-26: All to send retreat slides by 2023-05-05. • 2023-04-26: Dhruv Dhody, Suresh Krishnan, Tommy Pauly, and Jiankang Yao to interview potential ICANN NomCom candidates. 2. Technical Discussion: Fragmentation Wim Degezelle presented slides titled "IGF Policy Network on Internet Fragmentation." The Policy Network on Internet Fragmentation (PNIF) is an IGF intersessional activity to further the discussion on and to raise awareness of the technical, policy, legal and regulatory measures and actions that pose a risk to the open, interconnected and interoperable Internet. The objectives of the PNIF - over an envisaged 2 year timeframe - are to (a) Offer a systematic and comprehensive framework to define Internet fragmentation, its intended and unintended causes, and its potential effects; (b) Collect and analyze case studies to fine-tune and complement this framework; (c) Establish shared principles, recommendations or codes of conduct that prevent fragmentation and preserve the open, interconnected and interoperable nature of the Internet. The overall goal of the PNIF framework is to serve as a general guiding and orienting tool for continuing the dialogue about fragmentation and bringing in more people and stakeholders, allow a more holistic and inclusive debate, and at the same time create a space for focused discussion and work towards concrete solutions, policy approaches and guidelines. There are three main baskets of fragmentation: Fragmentation of the User Experience, Fragmentation of Internet governance and coordination, and Fragmentation of the Internet's technical layer. Fragmentation of the User Experience is fragmentation that results in different user experience of the Internet, depending on where one is accessing from (or not accessing). Fragmentation with regard to the user experience can result from: • not having effective or affordable access to infrastructure • interventions by states (e.g. blocking, shutdowns, censorship) • or corporations (content control, walled gardens, etc) There is a potential link with technical layer fragmentation when a continued disruption of the access to the free flow of data (e.g. because of blocking or filtering) leads to creation of alternative and separate applications and services that constitute separate ecosystems not interoperable with the Internet. Fragmentation of the Internet's Technical layer challenges the interoperability of the Internet, caused by: • Interference with the public core* of the I • The creation of 'national Internets' limited within geographic borders; • Routing of Internet traffic via the private infrastructure by big tech companies (* the public core is not universally defined) Fragmentation of Internet Governance and Coordination manifests through: • a changing commitment to the Multistakeholder management of the technical layer of the Internet; • a lack of global commitment and framework across multilateral and multistakeholder venues, governments, and stakeholders to address global Internet policy issues from a human rights and free flow of data perspective. Fragmentation of multistakeholder governance (i.e. competition or duplication between standards bodies like IETF or ETSI) can drive fragmentation at the technical layer (competing alternative protocols for transport security for example). The objectives of the PNIF 2023 are to unpack the PNIF framework via three parallel work streams: fragmentation of the user experience, fragmentation of the Internet’s technical layer, and fragmentation of Internet governance and coordination. The work streams will work in an open and bottom-up manner to take a deep dive into the identification and prevention of fragmentation. The combined work of the three work streams will culminate in the PNIF 2023 outputs, which are envisaged to include: • A refined and robust framework for discussing fragmentation, to provide increased clarity and common understanding about the diverse causes of fragmentation, their interrelation, impacts, and when fragmentation is most harmful and should be avoided • Recommended high-level overarching principles to avoid Internet fragmentation (building on the 2022 framework), to feed into discussions between policymakers and stakeholders, in particular but not exclusively in the framework of Global Digital Compact (GDC) process. • Concrete guidance and solutions for stakeholders to address fragmentation, including alternative solutions for problematic policies and behavior that might lead to harmful fragmentation The next steps are thematic webinars on fragmentation of the user experience, fragmentation of the Internet's technical layer, and fragmentation of Internet governance and coordination. This concluded Wim Degezelle's presentation. Konstantinos Komaitis then gave a presentation titled "Making sense of Internet fragmentation: The need to preserve interoperation in the Internet ecosystem." The Internet is an ecosystem; an ecosystem is different organisms that interact with the environment where we see competition, dynamism, and choice. In ecosystems, fragmentation happens when parts of a habitat are destroyed, leaving behind smaller unconnected areas. The effects of fragmentation include: • Loss of total habitat area. In a habitat this leaves species with less space to find what they need to survive. On the Internet this leaves users with a limited space to find everything they need. • Reduction of quality. In a habitat this is known as the ‘edge effect’. As a habitat is broken into smaller sections, the proportion of edge - where one habitat meets another - increases. On the Internet this is of lower quality as networks start growing not on the basis of autonomy but based on notions of (digital) sovereignty. • Extinction risk. In a habitat, fragmentation limits wildlife mobility. Individuals struggle to move between habitat patches, which can lead to inbreeding and a loss of genetic diversity. This reduces the long-term health of a population, making it more vulnerable to disease and at greater risk of extinction. A fragmented Internet means that the risk for the extinction of interoperability becomes somewhat real. Fragmentation limites interoperability as networks struggle to interoperate between different fragmented Internet spaces. Different stakeholders all mean something different when they say fragmentation: • Technical fragmentation refers to ‘the conditions in the underlying infrastructure that impede the ability of systems to fully interoperate and exchange data packets and of the Internet to function consistently at all end points’. • Governmental fragmentation refers to ‘policies and actions that constrain or prevent certain uses of the Internet to create, distribute or access information resources’. • Commercial fragmentation refers to ‘business practices that constrain or prevent certain uses of the Internet to create, distribute or access information resources’. The Internet, as it exists today, is an artifact of a time in which global cooperation seemed reasonable, even inevitable. Today though, geopolitical shifts are making collaboration impossible. Internet fragmentation must be seen both as a driver and a reflection of a growing fragmentation across the world (e.g. efforts by the US government to ban TikTok; EU’s entire data governance regime; EU’s "fair share" debate, etc.) The problem with fragmentation is that it puts global collaboration at risk, as differences in the Internet across borders are predictive of international trade and military relations. A fragmenting Internet is representative of and has the possibility of contributing to a fragmenting world order. Looking at worldwide patterns, the Internet is not bi-polar with China sitting on the one side and the West on the other. In fact, the picture is more complex and is getting increasingly more complex. Different countries, irrespective of geography, have different visions of the Internet. The Internet is multipolar, with different Internet governance decisions producing diverse types of Fragmentation. “Similar” countries diverge in surprising ways: there is this assumption that China’s Belt & Road initiative drives the China model elsewhere. This is not 100% true – research shows that China is not really exporting its own model, rather it gives the tools for other countries to create their own models. “Different” countries may share unexpected similarities: research is showing that countries like Norway, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and Bahrain have similar degrees of network interference, similar degree of content-layer locality and similar IPv6 penetration. Internet fragmentation has always existed, but the fact that the Internet has evolved the way it has, becoming global, is evidence that interoperability is more than just aspirational. World-scale collaboration, while difficult, is possible. Interoperability opens doors to participation and invites collaboration. The Internet and the threats to its operation as a global system are a continuous invitation to work together. Not agree; but work together. Policy makers must safeguard interoperability as a key attribute that would determine the future of the Internet as both global and open. David Frautschy added some perspective from ISOC. The approach ISOC takes is that they see the Internet may fracture and fragment, and this may have a negative impact on people's ability to freely use the Internet, but it is an ongoing process with no real line to say when it is fragmented or not. ISOC's project is about raising awareness by identifying the threats, and also using metrics as a tool for the community to be able to spot new issues coming up in their countries, and to be able to flag them and start the dialogue with policy makers. ISOC wants the community to be able to look at what has been done, and the toolkit can help give the right arguments to explain to policy makers what is wrong in their proposals. Mallory Knodel suggested that the antidote to technical fragmentation is interconnection, not interoperability. Interoperable protocols can be created but if countries and companies are not incentivized to connect with each other, this can't be solved at the protocol layer. There was brief discussion on what the IAB and the technical community can do to help. The IETF can continue to collaborate and bring people together from different geographies and different stakeholders. The IETF may also help with measurement. Sheetal Kumar said that it is important to strengthen places like the IGF where these discussions take place in spaces that are open to everyone, and the IGF would welcome more voices. The IAB thanked Wim, Konstantinos, David, and Sheetal for the presentations.