Minutes of the 2025-03-18 IAB Business Meeting, Bangkok

Present

  Matthew Bocci
  Alissa Cooper (remote)
  Roman Danyliw (IETF Chair)
  Dhruv Dhody
  Wes Hardaker
  Jana Iyengar (remote)
  Cullen Jennings
  Suresh Krishnan
  Mirja Kühlewind
  Dirk Kutscher (Incoming IRTF Chair)
  Warren Kumari
  Jason Livingood
  Cindy Morgan (IAB Executive Administrative Manager)
  Tommy Pauly (IAB Chair)
  Colin Perkins (IRTF Chair)
  Ryan Polk (remote)
  Alvaro Retana
  David Schinazi
  Christopher Wood (remote)
  Qin Wu

Guests:

  Lixia Zhang, DINRG Chair
  Sally Wentworth, Internet Society
  Olaf Kolkman, Internet Society
  Chris Locke, Internet Society Foundation

Regrets:

  Deb Cooley (IESG Liaison)
  Mark Nottingham


1. Decentralization of the Internet Research Group (DINRG) Review

  Lixia Zhang and Dirk Kutscher updated the IAB on the Decentralization
  of the Internet Research Group (DINRG).

  Since rechartering in July 2023, DINRG has held 6 meetings and
  organized one workshop at ACM CoNEXT 2024.

  Recent talks at DINRG Meetings include:

    • IETF 117
      - Cory Doctorow: Let The Platforms Burn: Bringing Back the Good
        Fire of the Old Internet
      - Volker Stocker & William Lehr: Ecosystem Evolution and
    Digital Infrastructure Policy Challenges: Insights &
    Reflections from an Economics Perspective
      - Christian Tschudin: Minimal Global Broadcast (MGB)

    • IETF 118
      - Tobias Fiebig: The Case of AS59645: Making it ping and doing
    stupid things
      - Michal Krol: The Cloud Strikes Back: Investigating the
    Decentralization of IPFS
      - Martin Kleppmann: Local-First Software
      - McFadden: A Taxonomy of Internet Consolidation

    • IETF 119:
      - Xing Li: Cyberspace Regulation Case Study
      - Wilfried Pinfold: Delivering Social and Municipal Services
      - NDN Workspace: A Local-First Application Prototype
      - Discussion on RFC 9518 “Centralization, Decentralization, and
        Internet Standards”

    • IETF 120
      - Kaliya Young: Exploring Decentralized Digital Identity
    Protocols
      - Michael Richardson: DNS-Bound Client and Sender Identities
      - Sheetal Kumar: Centralisation, Consolidation, and
    Fragmentation
      - Hadrian Zbarcea: SOLID: Your Data, Your Choice
      - Panel discussion: Internet Decentralization – Next Steps

    • IETF 121
      - Daniel Wagner: Distributing DDoS Analytics among ASes
      - Tianyuan Yu: The Role of DNS Names in the Internet
    Decentralization
      - McFadden: Taxonomy of Internet Consolidation & Effects of
    Internet Consolidation
      - DINRG – Next Steps

  The Decentralization of the Internet Workshop at ACM CoNEXT 2024
  included:

    • Keynote by Cory Doctorow: DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How computer
      scientists can halt enshittification to make a new, good internet
      and condemn today's enshitternet to the scrapheap of history

    • Keynote by Michael Karanicolas (director, UCLA Institute of
      Technology, Law, and Policy): The Fediverse Papers:
      Constitutional, Governance, and Policy Questions or a New
      Paradigm of Networking

    • 2 paper sessions on decentralized systems and approaches to
     decentralization

    • Panel: Decentralization of the Internet – Quo Vadis?
      - Panelists: Cory Doctorow, Michael Karanicolas, Dan Massey, Paul
    Mockapetris

  At IETF 121, DINRG identified a new direction with a focus on a few
  applications, noting that good platform components almost always come
  after the applications. At IETF 122, DINRG solicited three different
  application cases:

    • “A Closer Look into IPFS: Accessibility, Content, and
       Performance”
    • “Looking at the Blue Skies of Bluesky”
    • “The Impact of Network Architectures on the Development of
      Decentralizing Applications”

  DINRG has three new focuses:

    1. Measurements
       - Gauging the degree of decentralization out of different
         application design approaches
         • In addition to network layer traffic

    2. Improving understanding
       - Through specific case studies
       - Identifying root causes and common patterns

    3. Overcoming centralization
       - decentralizing applications
       - Bootstrapping decentralized secure communication
         • Beyond server trust anchors in client-server
           communication
         • Authenticated user IDs for Internet communication
       - Echoing the CoNEXT Workshop’s recommendation for the next
         step:
         • enabling direct user-to-user communication, no reliance
           on 3rd parties
         • Required functionality: user-owned identities, tools for
           mutual authentication to secure communications.

  Potential future work includes a full assessment of the fundamental
  tradeoffs between centralization and decentralization.


2. Internet Society Updates

  Sally Wentworth briefed the IAB on recent Internet Society
  activities. The current areas of focus are:

    • Strengthening and expanding ISOC's collaboration with the
      technical community
    • Advocacy around security
    • Preparations for WSIS+20


  Chris Locke noted that the Internet Society Foundation gives out
  grants and has a fellowship program. Roman Danyliw asked how the IETF
  can help. Chris replied that when talking to donors, it is valuable
  to be able to talk about the depth and breadth of the Internet
  Society's reach with the IETF and the technical community.