NomCom 2024
Desired expertise
These pages contain the current summaries of desired expertise for open positions, provided to the NomCom by the IESG, IAB, and IAOC. As the NomCom proceeds, per BCP 10, we receive input from the community on the qualifications required for the positions. The NomCom bases selections on all of this information. These pages may be updated periodically.
The Internet Engineering Task Force Administration LLC ("IETF LLC") provides a corporate legal framework for facilitating current and future activities related to the IETF as well as its sister organizations, the Internet Architecture Board ("IAB") and the Internet Research Task Force ("IRTF"). IETF LLC exists to provide administrative support to these organizations. Its responsibilities are:
- Operations: IETF LLC is responsible for supporting the ongoing operations of the IETF, including meetings and non-meeting activities.
- Finances: IETF LLC is responsible for managing the IETF's finances and budget.
- Fundraising: IETF LLC is responsible for raising money on behalf of the IETF.
- Compliance: IETF LLC is responsible for establishing and enforcing policies to ensure compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and rules.
- Reporting and Oversight: IETF LLC is responsible for transparent reporting on operations and finance and supports the work of external auditors during the IETF LLC’s annual audit.
Relation to the Internet Society
IETF LLC is organized as a “disregarded entity” of the Internet Society ("ISOC"), which means it operates as a branch or division of ISOC for tax purposes. ISOC is a US 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization founded in 1992 that supports and promotes the development of the Internet as a global technical infrastructure, a resource to enrich people’s lives, and a force for good in society.
IETF LLC Board Overview
All board directors are unpaid volunteers. The board is responsible for setting broad strategic direction for the IETF on administrative, legal, financial and other non-technical areas. The board is responsible for hiring and supervising an Executive Director. The Executive Director is responsible for managing the day-to-day affairs of IETF LLC, including hiring staff to carry out the LLC’s responsibilities.
The board’s other responsibilities include adopting an annual budget, adopting employee benefit plans, consulting the IETF community on matters as appropriate, and approving entering into agreements that meet a significant materiality threshold. Ideally, some board directors are positioned to play an active role in helping to secure financial resources for the IETF and to leverage personal connections that help the staff identify and solicit potential funders. The board’s work is high-level and strategic; the board is expected to delegate management of day-to-day activities and related decision-making to staff.
Candidate Experience
Ideal candidates for the role of board director should have prior professional experience with:
- Executive management, compensation, and performance review.
- Financial management and budgeting on a seven-figure scale.
- Working with legal counsel to address organization-related legal and compliance issues.
- Fundraising in the non-profit sector.
- Working with geographically and culturally diverse colleagues and populations; and
- Communicating with a variety of audiences to build support for the mission of the IETF or a similar organization.
Non-profit or corporate board experience and/or experience with the IETF or other similar technical or standards development organizations is helpful in fulfilling this role.
It seems unlikely that each candidate will bring all of this experience individually. Thus, the NomCom may wish to focus on selecting directors with complementary skills and experience. Note that the LLC is recruiting a new board member; a succession plan is in place for the Board Chair.
Candidate Requirements
Requirements for the role of board director include:
- Taking on legal and fiduciary responsibility for IETF LLC.
- Familiarity or the ability to familiarize him/herself with the IETF’s mission, history, structure, and culture.
- Traveling to board meetings multiple times per year. The number of meetings per year, their locations, decisions about co-locating them with IETF meetings, and availability of travel funding will be decided at the board’s discretion with input from the IETF community.
- Attending regular conference calls, potentially in different time zones outside of normal business hours.
- Preparing for board meetings and calls in advance and actively participating in board discussions.
- Making heavy use of email and other online communications tools as key means for advancing the work of the board and conversing with staff and IETF participants.
- Operating transparently and engaging openly with the IETF community and staff.
- Acting in compliance with all applicable laws, regulations, and board policies.
It is anticipated that board directors will spend an average of four hours per week on the board’s work.
IETF Trust NOMCOM 2024 Job Description
About the IETF Trust
The IETF Trust holds and manages intellectual property for the IETF as well as a limited number of trademarks and domain names for ICANN and IANA.
The IETF Trust holds assets that include copyrights, trademarks, software licenses and domain names used by the IETF. The IETF Trust does not hold or deal with patents.
The IETF Trust is not a revenue-generating licensing agent. The Trust does not charge any fees for use of the assets it holds.
The IETF Trust is a distinct and separate legal entity from the IETF LLC and ISOC. Trustees appointed to the IETF Trust become Directors of the IETF Intellectual Property Management Corporation, a Delaware Corporation and an IRS recognized 501c3 organization.
Information on the IETF Trust, its corporate documents and bylaws and the IP assets it holds is available at https://trustee.ietf.org/
Trustee Duties & Time Commitment
As Directors of the IETF Intellectual Property Management Corporation, IETF Trustees oversee the running of the corporation and the management of the intellectual property assets it holds.
IETF Trust Responsibilities:
- Review reported cases of copyright and trademark infringement of IETF Trust-held IP assets and decide, with advice from legal counsel as needed, on the appropriate response, including possible legal action.
- Answer questions about intellectual property rights, primarily copyright and software licenses related to IETF Contributions and RFCs from IETF chairs and working groups. Questions often involve resolving rights provenance and necessary rights of Trust-held assets being used in new derivative works.
- Answer questions on use of Trust held Intellectual Property assets by parties outside of the IETF. Often these involve assessing compliance with the Trust Legal Provisions (TLP) and offering suggestions on changes on proposed asset use to comply with the TLP.
- Occasionally set new licensing terms for asset uses not already covered by the terms in the Trust Legal Provisions (TLP) (available on the IETF Trust website).
- Oversee the administration and operation of the IETF Intellectual Property Management Corporation, including compliance with Delaware and US Federal and IRS regulations.
- The IETF Trust does not set or oversee execution of the IETF’s IP rights policies. The IETF Trust is assigned IP assets as part of the IETF’s IP framework and is responsible for holding and protecting the assets assigned to it.
- Note that the Trust does NOT provide legal advice to the IETF, IETF LLC, IETF community.
- The IETF Trust does make rights-holder type decisions about the intellectual property assets it holds and will provide guidance to the IETF on compliance with RFC5378 and the TLP.
Most IETF Trust activity is not overly time-sensitive; however, being an IETF Trustee is more of a commitment than simply attending a meeting once a month to vote on agenda topics. While the workload is nowhere as heavy as an IETF Area Director, it does require ongoing engagement on a weekly basis.
IETF Trust trustee duties and time commitment:
- Trustees select a Chair/President, a Treasurer and a Secretary from amongst the five appointed trustees.
- Trustees should expect: - up to 1-2 hours per week engaged in email discussions; - attend monthly 1 hour IETF Trust teleconference calls; and - participate in person (ideally) or remote in ~2 hr IETF Trust meetings held during each of the three annual IETF meeting weeks.
- Trustees must occasionally be available to provide input and approvals for time-sensitive requests and issues, typically a 2 day-1 week turn around. This is not an on-call role, but once or twice a year review and approvals of time-sensitive requests do occur.
- IETF trustees are also expected to be available to RFC Series Editors, Area Directors, and Working Groups to help answer questions about IETF Trust-held assets, typically relating to what rights are held by the IETF Trust for particular IETF Contributions and RFCs.
- IETF Trust Chair/President serves as the primary contact with staff and legal counsel and as a public point of contact for the IETF Trust. The position should expect up to 2-3 hours per week with bursts of 5-15 additional hours per week including dealing with occasional licensing and infringement issues. Chair is responsible for setting monthly meeting agendas, triaging incoming requests and overseeing ongoing corporate operations.
- IETF Trust Treasurer should expect 1 hr monthly to review monthly invoices and expenses and to review monthly budget statements before publishing on the IETF Trust website. Additionally, budget development and review can add 1-4 hours per week during budget season.
Trustee Requirements
Being a lawyer is NOT in any way a requirement for being an IETF Trustee. Since the Trust’s 2005 founding, most IETF Trustees have not been lawyers, though they often have an above average knowledge of copyright and trademark law.
The Trust employs both legal and professional services to aid the Trustees, so the expertise is available to draw upon as needed.
In many ways, the ideal Trustee is more of a great organization director with an appreciation for IP rights management and an understanding of the IETF’s RFC development process, than someone with deep expertise in legal minutiae.
While collectively the IETF Trustees tend to have above average knowledge of IP legal matters, they also collectively bring an appreciation for the somewhat unique IP framework (RFC 5378, Note Well, etc...) that the IETF has created and operates under. In particular, an understanding of IP rights around derivative works and how they impact RFC development is important to understand.
The IETF’s IP rights history stretches back many decades and often involves works that predate the IETF itself. The Trust was created in 2005 and so there are many IP rights provenance issues that IETF Trustees will be called upon to weigh in on for assets held in the IETF Trust.
Like any IP rights collection of thousands of works developed over many decades, the IETF Trust collection has many different IP rights provenance scenarios that IETF Trustees must understand and work with.
The following is a general skill set that is useful for the overall Trust to have. Successful candidates do not need to have each skill listed in order to be valuable members of the Trust, as the other Trustees balance any particular skills that may be less developed or missing in a successful candidate. Not in priority order: - Understanding of the IETF’s RFC development process. - Familiar with, or willingness to read and learn, the IETF’s evolution of its IP rights regime from the 1980s onwards to aid in resolving IP rights provenance questions. - Familiar with copyright law primarily in the United States, which is the Trust's legal home, though international experience is useful. - Familiar with trademark law and registrations. - Familiar with the RFC publication process as described in RFC 8728 and related documents. - Familiar with the Trust's copyright licenses, the Trust Legal Provisions, and with RFC5738/BCP 78, RFC 8721 and the IETF Trust FAQ. - Experience in board of directors operations is desirable. - Willing to serve multiple terms as a trustee to provide continuity of oversight.
Version: Aug 7, 2024
The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) is chartered both as a committee of the IETF and as an advisory body of the Internet Society (ISOC). The IAB supports the operation of the IETF. It provides architectural input into IETF technical activities as well as sponsoring and organizing work in the IRTF. The IAB acts as a source of advice and guidance concerning technical, architectural and procedural matters pertaining to the Internet and its enabling technologies.
Organizational Role
The IAB has a number of roles within the organizational functioning of the IETF. While these roles require administrative rather than technical work, they form a significant part of the IAB's activities.
- The IAB has a role in the IETF Nominations Committee process: the IAB confirms the IETF Chair and the Area Directors (IESG).
- The IAB serves as an appeal board for complaints of improper execution of the standards process, acting on appeals in respect of IESG standards decisions.
- The IAB appoints ISOC Board of Trustees (BoT) members and similar positions in other Internet governance bodies.
- The IAB hears appeals on matters related to the IETF LLC.
- The IAB provides direction for the administration of the IETF's protocol parameters registries (the IANA function).
- The IAB selects the Independent Submission Editor as well as the chair of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) and oversees the IRTF's activities.
- The IAB is responsible for interfacing with other organizations on behalf of the IETF. It does this primarily through its liaison process. When necessary, IAB members will more directly engage with those other organizations.
- The IAB reviews the charters of new and existing IRTF RGs. The IAB receives regular feedback and status overviews from IRTF RGs and provides feedback to the community from an architectural perspective.
All IAB members need to be prepared to participate (to varying degrees) in these activities.
Architectural Role
A principal role of the IAB is to take a broad and long-range perspective to offer input into the planning and coordination among different areas of Internet activities, including those of the IETF and IRTF. The sum of the expertise of IAB members encompasses a broad range of technologies under the IETF and IRTF. The IAB is expected to pay attention to important long-term issues in the Internet and to make sure that these issues are brought to the attention of the groups that are in a position to address them, and to make sure that the right people within these groups are in contact with each other.
The IAB maintains open communications channels with other bodies engaged in Internet governance, including ICANN, the Regional Internet Registries, and ISOC, and provides technical and architectural input as appropriate. As needed, the IAB works with ISOC to provide advice and guidance to the Internet community on technical, architectural, and policy matters pertaining to the Internet and its enabling technologies. That advice and guidance are provided to the public, to the Board of Trustees, and Officers of the Internet Society as circumstances dictate.
Organization of the IAB
In order to enhance institutional memory and enable the development of medium and long-term activities, the IAB has organized its work in several areas in the form of technical programs and administrative support groups (see https://www.iab.org/activities/programs/). A technical program is a long-term activity scoped and managed by the IAB comprised of a body of technical experts from the wider community (see RFC 2850, Section 2.1). Program outputs can include IAB documents and statements. All IAB members are expected to review and comment on program outputs that represent the consensus of the IAB. Administrative support groups are similar bodies that assist the IAB in carrying out its responsibilities to the community.
In order to ensure that all IAB activities have IAB participation, members of the IAB are expected to actively participate in one or more programs or administrative support groups.
The IAB schedules workshops on topics of interest from time to time, and IAB members are encouraged to attend these as well.
In addition, the IAB chooses a chair for a one-year term at the March IETF meeting, after new members of the IAB are seated. There shall be at least two members of the IAB (among the nominated slate and the incumbents) who are willing and able to take the role of Chair.
IAB Member Qualities
IAB members are expected to act at the "Board" level.
The IAB is most effective when it is composed of a diverse set of individuals with a broad range of technical skills, architectural perspectives and backgrounds. For example, it is desirable for IAB members to have technical leadership experience, operational management backgrounds, research or academic backgrounds, implementation experience, and experience in other bodies involved in Internet governance. Likewise, it is desirable for IAB members to have had experiences with differing technical challenges and requirements, including those that vary by geographic region. It is critical that IAB members be willing and able to work with each other to develop a shared viewpoint.
Some IAB activities are very specialized - for example, managing liaison relationships with other SDOs on behalf of the IETF. It is advantageous for the IAB when NomCom ensures that at least some IAB members have sufficient managerial skills to understand the issues that need to come to the IAB by managing and documenting inter-SDO liaison relationships on a strategic basis.
While it is advantageous for at least some IAB membership to have expertise in the IAB's current program topics, it is more important for the IAB to have membership who are experienced in managing volunteer teams, and who can build teams, motivate program work, and direct one or more programs even in the absence of in-depth knowledge about specific program topics.
The IAB needs at least some members with program management skills that will facilitate interfacing between programs and the IAB.
The IAB also has regular technical discussions with invited experts on selected topics that could be of interest to the Internet community. It would be helpful for IAB members to have some experience and interest in organizing such information exchanges with industry, academia and civil society.
While these characteristics are all important, individuals have different strengths. The IAB as a whole benefits most from a complementary and diverse set of skills that are balanced across all aspects of the role.
Time Commitment
The time commitment for an IAB member averages about six to sixteen hours a week in normal weeks (with significant week-to-week variability), and full-time during IETF meetings, retreats, and IAB workshops. Some positions within the IAB require more time.
It is expected that IAB members also actively participate in IETF activities. Simply tracking the various mailing lists and documents can take up to a day a week. About a quarter to half of the time is spent on organizational activities. Leading a program is an equivalent time commitment to chairing a working group; active participation in a program can take additional time. Each IAB member should be able to commit to leading a program during their IAB term.
The typical time commitment for the IAB Chair is three days a week, and this position may require more travel. The IAB Chair is an ex officio member of the IESG and must devote time to IESG meetings including a yearly retreat, which is often but not always adjacent to the IAB retreat.
IAB members may be called upon by ADs to do reviews of specialized documents and other tasks, potentially adding to those numbers.
IAB members should plan to arrive at IETF meetings at or before the start of the meeting week. Time commitment during the meeting includes time on Sunday, early mornings during the week, during meal times, and Friday after scheduled meetings conclude. IAB members are expected to cover and report on BoFs during the meeting. The IAB typically holds an annual retreat from one to three days, and teleconferences on a regular basis, currently 2-3 times a month.
IESG MEMBER DESIRED EXPERTISE
This note describes the expertise desired in the candidates selected to fill the positions of all IESG members.
Under the Nominations Committee (NomCom) procedures defined in RFC 7437/BCP 10, the IESG is responsible for providing a summary of the expertise desired of the candidates selected for open IESG positions. This information is included below and is suitable for publication to the community with the NomCom request for nominations.
We realize that this is a long list of desires and that no one person will be able to meet all of the expertise for a specific position. We trust that the NomCom will weigh all of these qualities and choose IESG members who represent the best possible balance of them.
Generic IESG Member Expertise
The IESG members are responsible for managing the IETF standards process. They must possess a thorough understanding of IETF operations, recognize areas in which the organization needs to evolve, and excel in collaborative work. They must also be able to inspire and motivate volunteers to work together and be adept at handling strong personalities and loud voices, fostering an environment in which discussions regarding ideas and technical merit may be held freely. An important aspect of this is helping newcomers become productive at the IETF and developing talent to fill important IETF roles in the future. And, of course, IESG members must also have sound technical judgment about IETF technology and its relationship to technology developed elsewhere.
The Area Director (AD) role includes significant people management, for which prior experience chairing a working group will be useful – although other people-management experience may be a reasonable substitute. ADs select the Working Group (WG) Chairs and then work with them to manage IETF WGs. Consequently, IESG members should possess sufficient interpersonal and management skills to manage 15 to 30 part-time volunteers. Most ADs are also responsible for the management of one or more directorates or review teams. The ability to identify good leaders and technical experts, and then recruit and rotate them for IETF work and leadership at all levels is crucial to the growth and success of the IETF.
ADs are also expected to recognize the need for changes in IETF processes or in the organization's overall role, in response to the evolving Internet and industry landscape.
An ideal IESG member has made significant technical contributions in more than one IETF Area. Similarly, the ability to review and usefully provide feedback on technical documents is a necessary skill for IESG members, for which serving on an area directorate or area review team would provide useful experience; active participation in working groups and other, non-IETF technical review activities can also help build such skills. A broad range of technical abilities and the capacity to quickly comprehend concepts outside their primary areas of expertise are more valuable than specific technical knowledge.
An AD need not be the ultimate expert and authority in any technical area. The abilities to manage, guide, and judge consensus, to know who the subject-matter experts are and to seek their advice, and to mentor other IETF participants to take the technical lead are at least as important as their technical abilities. Although the split varies from area to area, ADs can expect to spend approximately 30% of their IESG time on management tasks, with the remainder of their IESG time being spent on technical matters.
An AD must be able to personally review every Internet Draft that they sponsor. For other Internet Drafts, an AD needs to be satisfied that adequate review has taken place, before bringing the document to the IESG, though many ADs personally review these documents as well.
Experience attending multiple IETF meetings, creating Working Group (WG) session agendas, supervising WG sessions, and assisting in arranging interim WG meetings is highly beneficial for an IESG member.
IESG members must have strong oral and written communication skills. They must have a proven track record of leading and contributing to the consensus of diverse groups. They must be able to prioritize their work, and must reliably follow through and finish the important work items promptly.
An IESG member should be able to guide WGs to follow their charters and nurture new talent to fulfill IETF leadership roles in the future.
ADs are responsible for ensuring the review of errata; they may delegate the review or perform it personally. An AD should be able to process the errata, which will often require them to identify and reach out to relevant subject-matter experts, for documents that do not have an associated Working Group.
ADs engage with IANA to identify and approve designated experts for registries created and modified by document actions.
Basic IESG activities can consume significant time during a typical non-meeting week. Enough time must be allocated to manage approximately 10 to 15 working groups, review up to 400 pages of Internet Drafts every two weeks, and follow up on document processing tasks. Many ADs allocate a minimum of 15 hours per week to such tasks and others up to 25 hours per week. Some ADs have been able to combine significant non-IETF responsibilities with an AD role and/or delegate work to area directorates, while others put a larger proportion of their hours into AD responsibilities. ADs should plan to support each other, occasionally filling in for colleagues who are unavailable due to work or personal matters. A personal commitment is critical.
The time commitment varies by Area and by month, with the most intense periods immediately before and during IETF meetings. ADs during their first year tend to spend more time per week on AD work. Practices vary widely between IESG members, however. Most IESG members also participate in additional IETF leadership activities, further increasing the time commitment for those individuals. ADs may need to interact with external groups such as other standards development organizations (SDOs), which may require additional travel. We have also found IESG member in-person attendance at most IETF meetings to be imperative, typically arriving one or two days early and leaving one day later (to allow for pre/post-meeting activities). IESG members also attend one, and sometimes two, IESG retreats per year, as well as occasional workshops and interim meetings. An IESG member should, ideally, also be comfortable with working, and developing professional relationships, in a virtual environment.
Because of the time and travel commitments, and awkwardly-timed conference calls, IESG members have found that good personal motivation, family and sponsor support are important factors in making the role successful for them.
ART Area Director
See also general expertise for all area directors.
ART ADs are expected to take a lead role, guiding the community in the making of critical decisions about the scope of the IETF's applications-layer protocol work. Because of the breadth of the ART Area, the ART ADs need to deal with a large set of application-layer protocols, including many with which a particular AD may not have direct experience.
This description is careful to talk about the set of ART ADs as a collective, with a collective set of skills. No one AD will have all of them, and it would be best to look at a balanced skill set across the ART ADs. A generalist with good management skills and good working relationships within the community will be more successful than a narrow specialist.
The ART Area works on the application layer and related protocols:
- Real-time applications. These are protocols that enable interactive human-to-human communication (see RFC 3550). Groups in this category are working on things such as real-time web communications, teleconferencing, emergency services communication, internet telephony, and instant messaging.
- Traditional applications. These are the protocols we've generally thought of in relation to the application layer. They include such things as email, calendaring, directory services, provisioning and access protocols related to DNS and IP and support for constrained environments.
- Application building blocks. These are designed to be used with a variety of more specific applications. They include compression, codecs, internationalization; JSON, XML, and CBOR; media types; URNs; and URI schemes.
The ART Area often discusses whether something is properly the realm of the IETF or "belongs" to other SDOs, as a result, the set of ART ADs needs to include the ability and experience to relate to a wide range of non-IETF organizations, such as the W3C, WHATWG, 3GPP, and the Unicode Consortium.
It is important that for each of the following there be at least one AD with some understanding of it and an ability to find and leverage expertise on it when needed: internationalization; URI schemes; SIP, SDP and related services; RTP; media types; and email.
Cross-area expertise with the Security and Web and Internet Transport Areas is also useful, as there are often dependencies between ART work and those areas, particularly with respect to authentication, confidentiality, privacy, network congestion issues, and newly evolving work in the Web and Internet Transport Area.
ART ADs should be prepared to spend 50-75% of their time on IESG-related activities.
ART ADs maintain and support the ART Area Review Team (artart). ARTART provides reviews on request and during Last Call that can be used by the ADs as input for their ballot positions.
The ADs may delegate any tasks that can be delegated, but the ADs themselves still have the ultimate responsibility to ensure that ART Area considerations are appropriately taken into account during IESG Evaluation.
IESG MEMBER DESIRED EXPERTISE
This note describes the expertise desired in the candidates selected to fill the positions of all IESG members.
Under the Nominations Committee (NomCom) procedures defined in RFC 7437/BCP 10, the IESG is responsible for providing a summary of the expertise desired of the candidates selected for open IESG positions. This information is included below and is suitable for publication to the community with the NomCom request for nominations.
We realize that this is a long list of desires and that no one person will be able to meet all of the expertise for a specific position. We trust that the NomCom will weigh all of these qualities and choose IESG members who represent the best possible balance of them.
Generic IESG Member Expertise
The IESG members are responsible for managing the IETF standards process. They must possess a thorough understanding of IETF operations, recognize areas in which the organization needs to evolve, and excel in collaborative work. They must also be able to inspire and motivate volunteers to work together and be adept at handling strong personalities and loud voices, fostering an environment in which discussions regarding ideas and technical merit may be held freely. An important aspect of this is helping newcomers become productive at the IETF and developing talent to fill important IETF roles in the future. And, of course, IESG members must also have sound technical judgment about IETF technology and its relationship to technology developed elsewhere.
The Area Director (AD) role includes significant people management, for which prior experience chairing a working group will be useful – although other people-management experience may be a reasonable substitute. ADs select the Working Group (WG) Chairs and then work with them to manage IETF WGs. Consequently, IESG members should possess sufficient interpersonal and management skills to manage 15 to 30 part-time volunteers. Most ADs are also responsible for the management of one or more directorates or review teams. The ability to identify good leaders and technical experts, and then recruit and rotate them for IETF work and leadership at all levels is crucial to the growth and success of the IETF.
ADs are also expected to recognize the need for changes in IETF processes or in the organization's overall role, in response to the evolving Internet and industry landscape.
An ideal IESG member has made significant technical contributions in more than one IETF Area. Similarly, the ability to review and usefully provide feedback on technical documents is a necessary skill for IESG members, for which serving on an area directorate or area review team would provide useful experience; active participation in working groups and other, non-IETF technical review activities can also help build such skills. A broad range of technical abilities and the capacity to quickly comprehend concepts outside their primary areas of expertise are more valuable than specific technical knowledge.
An AD need not be the ultimate expert and authority in any technical area. The abilities to manage, guide, and judge consensus, to know who the subject-matter experts are and to seek their advice, and to mentor other IETF participants to take the technical lead are at least as important as their technical abilities. Although the split varies from area to area, ADs can expect to spend approximately 30% of their IESG time on management tasks, with the remainder of their IESG time being spent on technical matters.
An AD must be able to personally review every Internet Draft that they sponsor. For other Internet Drafts, an AD needs to be satisfied that adequate review has taken place, before bringing the document to the IESG, though many ADs personally review these documents as well.
Experience attending multiple IETF meetings, creating Working Group (WG) session agendas, supervising WG sessions, and assisting in arranging interim WG meetings is highly beneficial for an IESG member.
IESG members must have strong oral and written communication skills. They must have a proven track record of leading and contributing to the consensus of diverse groups. They must be able to prioritize their work, and must reliably follow through and finish the important work items promptly.
An IESG member should be able to guide WGs to follow their charters and nurture new talent to fulfill IETF leadership roles in the future.
ADs are responsible for ensuring the review of errata; they may delegate the review or perform it personally. An AD should be able to process the errata, which will often require them to identify and reach out to relevant subject-matter experts, for documents that do not have an associated Working Group.
ADs engage with IANA to identify and approve designated experts for registries created and modified by document actions.
Basic IESG activities can consume significant time during a typical non-meeting week. Enough time must be allocated to manage approximately 10 to 15 working groups, review up to 400 pages of Internet Drafts every two weeks, and follow up on document processing tasks. Many ADs allocate a minimum of 15 hours per week to such tasks and others up to 25 hours per week. Some ADs have been able to combine significant non-IETF responsibilities with an AD role and/or delegate work to area directorates, while others put a larger proportion of their hours into AD responsibilities. ADs should plan to support each other, occasionally filling in for colleagues who are unavailable due to work or personal matters. A personal commitment is critical.
The time commitment varies by Area and by month, with the most intense periods immediately before and during IETF meetings. ADs during their first year tend to spend more time per week on AD work. Practices vary widely between IESG members, however. Most IESG members also participate in additional IETF leadership activities, further increasing the time commitment for those individuals. ADs may need to interact with external groups such as other standards development organizations (SDOs), which may require additional travel. We have also found IESG member in-person attendance at most IETF meetings to be imperative, typically arriving one or two days early and leaving one day later (to allow for pre/post-meeting activities). IESG members also attend one, and sometimes two, IESG retreats per year, as well as occasional workshops and interim meetings. An IESG member should, ideally, also be comfortable with working, and developing professional relationships, in a virtual environment.
Because of the time and travel commitments, and awkwardly-timed conference calls, IESG members have found that good personal motivation, family and sponsor support are important factors in making the role successful for them.
INT Area Director
See also general expertise for all area directors.
The primary technical topics covered by the Internet Area include the IP layer (both IPv4 and IPv6), implications of IPv6 adoption, co-existence between the IP versions, DNS, DHCP, IP mobility, multihoming, multicast, host and router configuration, time protocols, Internet of Things, store-and-forward networking along with various link-layer technologies.
The Internet Area is responsible for specifying how IP will run over new link-layer protocols as they are defined. New link-layer protocols still being defined now are in emerging technologies like IoT or constrained networking.
Between them, the Internet ADs are expected to have a solid understanding of these technologies, including issues related to IP addressing, name resolution, forwarding, tunneling, fragmentation, and wireless link-layers.
Since the Internet Area includes a broad range of technical topics, the Internet Area ADs typically divide the WGs that they manage based on workload and expertise. To assist the ADs, there is the Internet Area directorate, DNS directorate, and IoT directorates. However, with the large number of WGs, the Internet Area has historically required considerable time commitment and breadth of expertise from its ADs. The Internet Area traditionally intersects most frequently with all of the other Areas.
Interaction with the Web and Internet Transport (WIT) Area is related to work on tunneling, address translation, fragmentation, ICMP, and multihoming mechanisms. Interaction with the Routing Area concentrates mainly on the relationship between the operation of the IP layer and routing functionality, as well as some specific touchpoints related to routing for constrained devices.
Interaction with the Operations and Management Area is focused on operations required for IPv6 adoption, new sub-IP technologies, YANG models development, and AAA interactions. Interaction with the Security Area is focused on topics such as DNS security and privacy, IPsec usage, and network access control.
The touchpoints with the ART area are related to DNS and to the IoT space where there are tight interactions between application-layer protocols such as CoAP and IPv6-over-constrained-link-layer adaptations in order to provide better efficiency. Cross-area expertise in any of these Areas is particularly useful.
The Internet Area is also often involved in the adaptation of a variety of technologies to IP, some of which may require interactions with many other organizations such as 3GPP, IEEE, BBF, ETSI, and CableLabs. There are also ad-hoc interactions with several standardization organizations in the IoT space. Expertise with liaison processes and an understanding of how Internet Area protocols are used in various networks (such as broadband, wireless & cellular networks, low-power networks, large data centers, and the "Internet of Things"), is highly desirable.
Given all of the above an ideal candidate, in this cycle, should have a deep understanding of IPv6, DNS, low-power wireless technologies, IoT, and constrained devices and networks.
IESG MEMBER DESIRED EXPERTISE
This note describes the expertise desired in the candidates selected to fill the positions of all IESG members.
Under the Nominations Committee (NomCom) procedures defined in RFC 7437/BCP 10, the IESG is responsible for providing a summary of the expertise desired of the candidates selected for open IESG positions. This information is included below and is suitable for publication to the community with the NomCom request for nominations.
We realize that this is a long list of desires and that no one person will be able to meet all of the expertise for a specific position. We trust that the NomCom will weigh all of these qualities and choose IESG members who represent the best possible balance of them.
Generic IESG Member Expertise
The IESG members are responsible for managing the IETF standards process. They must possess a thorough understanding of IETF operations, recognize areas in which the organization needs to evolve, and excel in collaborative work. They must also be able to inspire and motivate volunteers to work together and be adept at handling strong personalities and loud voices, fostering an environment in which discussions regarding ideas and technical merit may be held freely. An important aspect of this is helping newcomers become productive at the IETF and developing talent to fill important IETF roles in the future. And, of course, IESG members must also have sound technical judgment about IETF technology and its relationship to technology developed elsewhere.
The Area Director (AD) role includes significant people management, for which prior experience chairing a working group will be useful – although other people-management experience may be a reasonable substitute. ADs select the Working Group (WG) Chairs and then work with them to manage IETF WGs. Consequently, IESG members should possess sufficient interpersonal and management skills to manage 15 to 30 part-time volunteers. Most ADs are also responsible for the management of one or more directorates or review teams. The ability to identify good leaders and technical experts, and then recruit and rotate them for IETF work and leadership at all levels is crucial to the growth and success of the IETF.
ADs are also expected to recognize the need for changes in IETF processes or in the organization's overall role, in response to the evolving Internet and industry landscape.
An ideal IESG member has made significant technical contributions in more than one IETF Area. Similarly, the ability to review and usefully provide feedback on technical documents is a necessary skill for IESG members, for which serving on an area directorate or area review team would provide useful experience; active participation in working groups and other, non-IETF technical review activities can also help build such skills. A broad range of technical abilities and the capacity to quickly comprehend concepts outside their primary areas of expertise are more valuable than specific technical knowledge.
An AD need not be the ultimate expert and authority in any technical area. The abilities to manage, guide, and judge consensus, to know who the subject-matter experts are and to seek their advice, and to mentor other IETF participants to take the technical lead are at least as important as their technical abilities. Although the split varies from area to area, ADs can expect to spend approximately 30% of their IESG time on management tasks, with the remainder of their IESG time being spent on technical matters.
An AD must be able to personally review every Internet Draft that they sponsor. For other Internet Drafts, an AD needs to be satisfied that adequate review has taken place, before bringing the document to the IESG, though many ADs personally review these documents as well.
Experience attending multiple IETF meetings, creating Working Group (WG) session agendas, supervising WG sessions, and assisting in arranging interim WG meetings is highly beneficial for an IESG member.
IESG members must have strong oral and written communication skills. They must have a proven track record of leading and contributing to the consensus of diverse groups. They must be able to prioritize their work, and must reliably follow through and finish the important work items promptly.
An IESG member should be able to guide WGs to follow their charters and nurture new talent to fulfill IETF leadership roles in the future.
ADs are responsible for ensuring the review of errata; they may delegate the review or perform it personally. An AD should be able to process the errata, which will often require them to identify and reach out to relevant subject-matter experts, for documents that do not have an associated Working Group.
ADs engage with IANA to identify and approve designated experts for registries created and modified by document actions.
Basic IESG activities can consume significant time during a typical non-meeting week. Enough time must be allocated to manage approximately 10 to 15 working groups, review up to 400 pages of Internet Drafts every two weeks, and follow up on document processing tasks. Many ADs allocate a minimum of 15 hours per week to such tasks and others up to 25 hours per week. Some ADs have been able to combine significant non-IETF responsibilities with an AD role and/or delegate work to area directorates, while others put a larger proportion of their hours into AD responsibilities. ADs should plan to support each other, occasionally filling in for colleagues who are unavailable due to work or personal matters. A personal commitment is critical.
The time commitment varies by Area and by month, with the most intense periods immediately before and during IETF meetings. ADs during their first year tend to spend more time per week on AD work. Practices vary widely between IESG members, however. Most IESG members also participate in additional IETF leadership activities, further increasing the time commitment for those individuals. ADs may need to interact with external groups such as other standards development organizations (SDOs), which may require additional travel. We have also found IESG member in-person attendance at most IETF meetings to be imperative, typically arriving one or two days early and leaving one day later (to allow for pre/post-meeting activities). IESG members also attend one, and sometimes two, IESG retreats per year, as well as occasional workshops and interim meetings. An IESG member should, ideally, also be comfortable with working, and developing professional relationships, in a virtual environment.
Because of the time and travel commitments, and awkwardly-timed conference calls, IESG members have found that good personal motivation, family and sponsor support are important factors in making the role successful for them.
OPS Area Director
See also general expertise for all area directors.
Unlike most IETF areas, the Operations & Management area is logically divided into two separate functions: Network Management and Operations.
This year, the Operations AD role is open, so specific expertise required for the open position includes a strong understanding of Internet operations, as well as the ability to step into Network Management issues when necessary.
The primary technical areas covered by the Operations side of Ops & Management include: operational topics facing the Internet such as DNS operations, IPv6 operations, global routing (including SIDR) operations, operational aspects of SRv6, benchmarking, IoT operations, IP Performance Measurement, operational security, as well as operational issues associated with Network Management. In addition, the Ops part of Ops & Management oversees and organizes the Technology Deep Dives sessions.
The Operations AD role includes soliciting operator feedback and input regarding IETF work. This is a challenging task that requires strong contacts in the operations community and a great deal of persistence to maintain constructive engagement.
Another important role of the Operations AD is to identify potential or actual operational issues regarding IETF protocols and documents in all Areas, and to work with the other Areas to resolve those issues. This requires a strong understanding of how new and updated protocols may affect operations as well as the ability to gather information from the operations community and then translate that information into suggestions for protocol architecture and design within the IETF. It also requires a strong cross-area understanding of IETF protocol architecture and technologies.
The Operations portion of the Ops Area interacts most often with the Routing, Internet and Security areas. So, cross-area expertise in those areas is critical to success.
Even more than most AD roles, the Ops AD position requires a very wide range of cross-area knowledge; understanding if an RFC will impact operations requires being an in-depth generalist :) and the ability to know if an RFC will impact operations and actually be deployable in real networks.
IESG MEMBER DESIRED EXPERTISE
This note describes the expertise desired in the candidates selected to fill the positions of all IESG members.
Under the Nominations Committee (NomCom) procedures defined in RFC 7437/BCP 10, the IESG is responsible for providing a summary of the expertise desired of the candidates selected for open IESG positions. This information is included below and is suitable for publication to the community with the NomCom request for nominations.
We realize that this is a long list of desires and that no one person will be able to meet all of the expertise for a specific position. We trust that the NomCom will weigh all of these qualities and choose IESG members who represent the best possible balance of them.
Generic IESG Member Expertise
The IESG members are responsible for managing the IETF standards process. They must possess a thorough understanding of IETF operations, recognize areas in which the organization needs to evolve, and excel in collaborative work. They must also be able to inspire and motivate volunteers to work together and be adept at handling strong personalities and loud voices, fostering an environment in which discussions regarding ideas and technical merit may be held freely. An important aspect of this is helping newcomers become productive at the IETF and developing talent to fill important IETF roles in the future. And, of course, IESG members must also have sound technical judgment about IETF technology and its relationship to technology developed elsewhere.
The Area Director (AD) role includes significant people management, for which prior experience chairing a working group will be useful – although other people-management experience may be a reasonable substitute. ADs select the Working Group (WG) Chairs and then work with them to manage IETF WGs. Consequently, IESG members should possess sufficient interpersonal and management skills to manage 15 to 30 part-time volunteers. Most ADs are also responsible for the management of one or more directorates or review teams. The ability to identify good leaders and technical experts, and then recruit and rotate them for IETF work and leadership at all levels is crucial to the growth and success of the IETF.
ADs are also expected to recognize the need for changes in IETF processes or in the organization's overall role, in response to the evolving Internet and industry landscape.
An ideal IESG member has made significant technical contributions in more than one IETF Area. Similarly, the ability to review and usefully provide feedback on technical documents is a necessary skill for IESG members, for which serving on an area directorate or area review team would provide useful experience; active participation in working groups and other, non-IETF technical review activities can also help build such skills. A broad range of technical abilities and the capacity to quickly comprehend concepts outside their primary areas of expertise are more valuable than specific technical knowledge.
An AD need not be the ultimate expert and authority in any technical area. The abilities to manage, guide, and judge consensus, to know who the subject-matter experts are and to seek their advice, and to mentor other IETF participants to take the technical lead are at least as important as their technical abilities. Although the split varies from area to area, ADs can expect to spend approximately 30% of their IESG time on management tasks, with the remainder of their IESG time being spent on technical matters.
An AD must be able to personally review every Internet Draft that they sponsor. For other Internet Drafts, an AD needs to be satisfied that adequate review has taken place, before bringing the document to the IESG, though many ADs personally review these documents as well.
Experience attending multiple IETF meetings, creating Working Group (WG) session agendas, supervising WG sessions, and assisting in arranging interim WG meetings is highly beneficial for an IESG member.
IESG members must have strong oral and written communication skills. They must have a proven track record of leading and contributing to the consensus of diverse groups. They must be able to prioritize their work, and must reliably follow through and finish the important work items promptly.
An IESG member should be able to guide WGs to follow their charters and nurture new talent to fulfill IETF leadership roles in the future.
ADs are responsible for ensuring the review of errata; they may delegate the review or perform it personally. An AD should be able to process the errata, which will often require them to identify and reach out to relevant subject-matter experts, for documents that do not have an associated Working Group.
ADs engage with IANA to identify and approve designated experts for registries created and modified by document actions.
Basic IESG activities can consume significant time during a typical non-meeting week. Enough time must be allocated to manage approximately 10 to 15 working groups, review up to 400 pages of Internet Drafts every two weeks, and follow up on document processing tasks. Many ADs allocate a minimum of 15 hours per week to such tasks and others up to 25 hours per week. Some ADs have been able to combine significant non-IETF responsibilities with an AD role and/or delegate work to area directorates, while others put a larger proportion of their hours into AD responsibilities. ADs should plan to support each other, occasionally filling in for colleagues who are unavailable due to work or personal matters. A personal commitment is critical.
The time commitment varies by Area and by month, with the most intense periods immediately before and during IETF meetings. ADs during their first year tend to spend more time per week on AD work. Practices vary widely between IESG members, however. Most IESG members also participate in additional IETF leadership activities, further increasing the time commitment for those individuals. ADs may need to interact with external groups such as other standards development organizations (SDOs), which may require additional travel. We have also found IESG member in-person attendance at most IETF meetings to be imperative, typically arriving one or two days early and leaving one day later (to allow for pre/post-meeting activities). IESG members also attend one, and sometimes two, IESG retreats per year, as well as occasional workshops and interim meetings. An IESG member should, ideally, also be comfortable with working, and developing professional relationships, in a virtual environment.
Because of the time and travel commitments, and awkwardly-timed conference calls, IESG members have found that good personal motivation, family and sponsor support are important factors in making the role successful for them.
RTG Area Director
See also general expertise for all area directors.
Routing Area Overview
The Routing Area is tasked with ensuring the efficient operation of the Internet routing system. This involves maintaining and enhancing the scalability and stability of existing routing protocols, as well as developing new protocols, extensions, and errata. The area encompasses forwarding methods (e.g., destination-based unicast and multicast forwarding, MPLS, pseudowire) and associated routing and signaling protocols (e.g., OSPF, IS-IS, BGP, RSVP-TE, LDP, PIM, RPL, and VPNs at Layer 2 and Layer 3). Both centralized and distributed routing architectures, including those addressing virtualization, service chaining, traffic engineering, and data center routing, fall within its scope. The Routing Area also manages interactions with configuration and orchestration platforms, such as routing-related YANG models and path computation engines, and focuses on Generalized MPLS used in the control plane of optical networks, as well as the security and manageability of the routing system. The Working Groups (WGs) in this area cover a wide range of data plane technologies and control protocols.
Requirements for a Routing Area Director (AD)
A Routing Area Director must possess a comprehensive understanding of the Internet routing system and its operations. Proficiency in at least two mainstream routing protocols or technologies, such as BGP, OSPF, IS-IS, MPLS, GMPLS, Segment Routing, or multicast, is essential. Knowledge of routing services (e.g., pseudowire, L2VPN, L3VPN) and familiarity with recent routing trends (e.g., new routing management models, compute/network integration, time-sensitive routing) are beneficial. Experience in implementing routing protocols, while not mandatory, is highly valuable, as is operational experience and significant contributions to the Routing Area WGs. Experience in non-traditional environments, such as mobile, ad hoc, and sensor networks, and an understanding of interactions with other network systems, including security and management, are advantageous. Demonstrated experience in routing protocol security is also valuable.
Management and Coordination
The Routing Area is managed by three Area Directors who typically distribute WG responsibilities based on workload and expertise. An active Routing Area directorate supports the ADs by providing technical reviews on demand. Given the broad range of related technical topics, the Routing ADs coordinate closely on the overall direction of the area and routinely engage with WG Chairs. In addition to IESG-level commitments, the Routing ADs hold periodic meetings and organize training and other informal sessions with the WG Chairs.
Interactions with Other Areas and SDOs
The Routing Area frequently intersects with the Internet Area, the Operations and Management Area, and the Security Area. Interaction with the Internet Area mainly involves IP forwarding and encapsulation, while work with the Operations and Management Area focuses on developing YANG models and considering the management and operation of the routing infrastructure. Collaboration with the Security Area emphasizes routing protocol security and its impact on the Internet's infrastructure security. Cross-area expertise in any of these areas is beneficial. The Routing Area's work often overlaps with other Standard Development Organizations (SDOs), particularly the Broadband Forum (BBF), IEEE, and ITU-T, making knowledge of these organizations' workings advantageous.
IESG MEMBER DESIRED EXPERTISE
This note describes the expertise desired in the candidates selected to fill the positions of all IESG members.
Under the Nominations Committee (NomCom) procedures defined in RFC 7437/BCP 10, the IESG is responsible for providing a summary of the expertise desired of the candidates selected for open IESG positions. This information is included below and is suitable for publication to the community with the NomCom request for nominations.
We realize that this is a long list of desires and that no one person will be able to meet all of the expertise for a specific position. We trust that the NomCom will weigh all of these qualities and choose IESG members who represent the best possible balance of them.
Generic IESG Member Expertise
The IESG members are responsible for managing the IETF standards process. They must possess a thorough understanding of IETF operations, recognize areas in which the organization needs to evolve, and excel in collaborative work. They must also be able to inspire and motivate volunteers to work together and be adept at handling strong personalities and loud voices, fostering an environment in which discussions regarding ideas and technical merit may be held freely. An important aspect of this is helping newcomers become productive at the IETF and developing talent to fill important IETF roles in the future. And, of course, IESG members must also have sound technical judgment about IETF technology and its relationship to technology developed elsewhere.
The Area Director (AD) role includes significant people management, for which prior experience chairing a working group will be useful – although other people-management experience may be a reasonable substitute. ADs select the Working Group (WG) Chairs and then work with them to manage IETF WGs. Consequently, IESG members should possess sufficient interpersonal and management skills to manage 15 to 30 part-time volunteers. Most ADs are also responsible for the management of one or more directorates or review teams. The ability to identify good leaders and technical experts, and then recruit and rotate them for IETF work and leadership at all levels is crucial to the growth and success of the IETF.
ADs are also expected to recognize the need for changes in IETF processes or in the organization's overall role, in response to the evolving Internet and industry landscape.
An ideal IESG member has made significant technical contributions in more than one IETF Area. Similarly, the ability to review and usefully provide feedback on technical documents is a necessary skill for IESG members, for which serving on an area directorate or area review team would provide useful experience; active participation in working groups and other, non-IETF technical review activities can also help build such skills. A broad range of technical abilities and the capacity to quickly comprehend concepts outside their primary areas of expertise are more valuable than specific technical knowledge.
An AD need not be the ultimate expert and authority in any technical area. The abilities to manage, guide, and judge consensus, to know who the subject-matter experts are and to seek their advice, and to mentor other IETF participants to take the technical lead are at least as important as their technical abilities. Although the split varies from area to area, ADs can expect to spend approximately 30% of their IESG time on management tasks, with the remainder of their IESG time being spent on technical matters.
An AD must be able to personally review every Internet Draft that they sponsor. For other Internet Drafts, an AD needs to be satisfied that adequate review has taken place, before bringing the document to the IESG, though many ADs personally review these documents as well.
Experience attending multiple IETF meetings, creating Working Group (WG) session agendas, supervising WG sessions, and assisting in arranging interim WG meetings is highly beneficial for an IESG member.
IESG members must have strong oral and written communication skills. They must have a proven track record of leading and contributing to the consensus of diverse groups. They must be able to prioritize their work, and must reliably follow through and finish the important work items promptly.
An IESG member should be able to guide WGs to follow their charters and nurture new talent to fulfill IETF leadership roles in the future.
ADs are responsible for ensuring the review of errata; they may delegate the review or perform it personally. An AD should be able to process the errata, which will often require them to identify and reach out to relevant subject-matter experts, for documents that do not have an associated Working Group.
ADs engage with IANA to identify and approve designated experts for registries created and modified by document actions.
Basic IESG activities can consume significant time during a typical non-meeting week. Enough time must be allocated to manage approximately 10 to 15 working groups, review up to 400 pages of Internet Drafts every two weeks, and follow up on document processing tasks. Many ADs allocate a minimum of 15 hours per week to such tasks and others up to 25 hours per week. Some ADs have been able to combine significant non-IETF responsibilities with an AD role and/or delegate work to area directorates, while others put a larger proportion of their hours into AD responsibilities. ADs should plan to support each other, occasionally filling in for colleagues who are unavailable due to work or personal matters. A personal commitment is critical.
The time commitment varies by Area and by month, with the most intense periods immediately before and during IETF meetings. ADs during their first year tend to spend more time per week on AD work. Practices vary widely between IESG members, however. Most IESG members also participate in additional IETF leadership activities, further increasing the time commitment for those individuals. ADs may need to interact with external groups such as other standards development organizations (SDOs), which may require additional travel. We have also found IESG member in-person attendance at most IETF meetings to be imperative, typically arriving one or two days early and leaving one day later (to allow for pre/post-meeting activities). IESG members also attend one, and sometimes two, IESG retreats per year, as well as occasional workshops and interim meetings. An IESG member should, ideally, also be comfortable with working, and developing professional relationships, in a virtual environment.
Because of the time and travel commitments, and awkwardly-timed conference calls, IESG members have found that good personal motivation, family and sponsor support are important factors in making the role successful for them.
SEC Area Director
See also general expertise for all area directors.
The Security Area primarily focuses on protocols that provide one or more security services such as integrity, authentication, authorization, confidentiality, access control, assessment, and threat mitigation. The privacy properties and usability of IETF protocols are also important considerations.
Specific expertise required for a Security AD includes a strong working knowledge of IETF security protocols and mechanisms that have been developed in the Security Area, other Areas of the IETF, and outside the IETF. It is also important for Security ADs to understand the practical aspects of securing Internet resources and communication, including the use of common classes of cryptographic primitives and common misuse of such primitives. A good understanding of threat modeling and risk assessment as well as operational and industry practices is also beneficial.
Between the two Security ADs there will ideally be one who is knowledgeable about major IETF security protocols such as PKIX, IPsec, TLS, OAuth, EAP, CMS, and S/MIME. Ideally, at least one AD would be knowledgeable about governance, policy, and risk management; security and privacy controls in complex systems; the web security model; security operations and monitoring; incident response; and security in a systems development lifecycle.
The Security Area intersects with all other IETF Areas, and the Security ADs are expected to review, assess and improve the security properties of documents produced by all IETF Areas. Security ADs become personally involved with coordinating the involvement of security experts in the work of other Areas. Broad knowledge of IETF areas and technologies and the ability to assimilate new information quickly are imperative for a Security AD.
IESG MEMBER DESIRED EXPERTISE
This note describes the expertise desired in the candidates selected to fill the positions of all IESG members.
Under the Nominations Committee (NomCom) procedures defined in RFC 7437/BCP 10, the IESG is responsible for providing a summary of the expertise desired of the candidates selected for open IESG positions. This information is included below and is suitable for publication to the community with the NomCom request for nominations.
We realize that this is a long list of desires and that no one person will be able to meet all of the expertise for a specific position. We trust that the NomCom will weigh all of these qualities and choose IESG members who represent the best possible balance of them.
Generic IESG Member Expertise
The IESG members are responsible for managing the IETF standards process. They must possess a thorough understanding of IETF operations, recognize areas in which the organization needs to evolve, and excel in collaborative work. They must also be able to inspire and motivate volunteers to work together and be adept at handling strong personalities and loud voices, fostering an environment in which discussions regarding ideas and technical merit may be held freely. An important aspect of this is helping newcomers become productive at the IETF and developing talent to fill important IETF roles in the future. And, of course, IESG members must also have sound technical judgment about IETF technology and its relationship to technology developed elsewhere.
The Area Director (AD) role includes significant people management, for which prior experience chairing a working group will be useful – although other people-management experience may be a reasonable substitute. ADs select the Working Group (WG) Chairs and then work with them to manage IETF WGs. Consequently, IESG members should possess sufficient interpersonal and management skills to manage 15 to 30 part-time volunteers. Most ADs are also responsible for the management of one or more directorates or review teams. The ability to identify good leaders and technical experts, and then recruit and rotate them for IETF work and leadership at all levels is crucial to the growth and success of the IETF.
ADs are also expected to recognize the need for changes in IETF processes or in the organization's overall role, in response to the evolving Internet and industry landscape.
An ideal IESG member has made significant technical contributions in more than one IETF Area. Similarly, the ability to review and usefully provide feedback on technical documents is a necessary skill for IESG members, for which serving on an area directorate or area review team would provide useful experience; active participation in working groups and other, non-IETF technical review activities can also help build such skills. A broad range of technical abilities and the capacity to quickly comprehend concepts outside their primary areas of expertise are more valuable than specific technical knowledge.
An AD need not be the ultimate expert and authority in any technical area. The abilities to manage, guide, and judge consensus, to know who the subject-matter experts are and to seek their advice, and to mentor other IETF participants to take the technical lead are at least as important as their technical abilities. Although the split varies from area to area, ADs can expect to spend approximately 30% of their IESG time on management tasks, with the remainder of their IESG time being spent on technical matters.
An AD must be able to personally review every Internet Draft that they sponsor. For other Internet Drafts, an AD needs to be satisfied that adequate review has taken place, before bringing the document to the IESG, though many ADs personally review these documents as well.
Experience attending multiple IETF meetings, creating Working Group (WG) session agendas, supervising WG sessions, and assisting in arranging interim WG meetings is highly beneficial for an IESG member.
IESG members must have strong oral and written communication skills. They must have a proven track record of leading and contributing to the consensus of diverse groups. They must be able to prioritize their work, and must reliably follow through and finish the important work items promptly.
An IESG member should be able to guide WGs to follow their charters and nurture new talent to fulfill IETF leadership roles in the future.
ADs are responsible for ensuring the review of errata; they may delegate the review or perform it personally. An AD should be able to process the errata, which will often require them to identify and reach out to relevant subject-matter experts, for documents that do not have an associated Working Group.
ADs engage with IANA to identify and approve designated experts for registries created and modified by document actions.
Basic IESG activities can consume significant time during a typical non-meeting week. Enough time must be allocated to manage approximately 10 to 15 working groups, review up to 400 pages of Internet Drafts every two weeks, and follow up on document processing tasks. Many ADs allocate a minimum of 15 hours per week to such tasks and others up to 25 hours per week. Some ADs have been able to combine significant non-IETF responsibilities with an AD role and/or delegate work to area directorates, while others put a larger proportion of their hours into AD responsibilities. ADs should plan to support each other, occasionally filling in for colleagues who are unavailable due to work or personal matters. A personal commitment is critical.
The time commitment varies by Area and by month, with the most intense periods immediately before and during IETF meetings. ADs during their first year tend to spend more time per week on AD work. Practices vary widely between IESG members, however. Most IESG members also participate in additional IETF leadership activities, further increasing the time commitment for those individuals. ADs may need to interact with external groups such as other standards development organizations (SDOs), which may require additional travel. We have also found IESG member in-person attendance at most IETF meetings to be imperative, typically arriving one or two days early and leaving one day later (to allow for pre/post-meeting activities). IESG members also attend one, and sometimes two, IESG retreats per year, as well as occasional workshops and interim meetings. An IESG member should, ideally, also be comfortable with working, and developing professional relationships, in a virtual environment.
Because of the time and travel commitments, and awkwardly-timed conference calls, IESG members have found that good personal motivation, family and sponsor support are important factors in making the role successful for them.
WIT Area Director
See also general expertise for all area directors.
The Web and Internet Transport (WIT) area covers protocols that provide the functions of the Transport Layer of the Internet, such as QUIC, TCP, UDP, SCTP, and DCCP, including congestion control and queue management. It also has responsibility for protocols that implement the World Wide Web (like HTTP) and adjacent technologies. This area is logically divided into two parts - transport protocols and web protocols.
Together, the WIT Area Directors are expected to effectively charter, manage, and review current and new transport and web protocol work, including congestion control, loss recovery, Quality of Service (QoS, including Differentiated Services and reservation signaling), Proxying and tunneling, QUIC and HTTP protocol extensions, application network interaction, real-time communication, and storage protocols for the Internet.
At least one of the WIT ADs should have a broad understanding of core end-to-end transport topics and knowledge about the widely used transport protocols, such as TCP and QUIC, as well as how transport protocols interact with network-layer technologies and protocols and application layer protocols. The WIT area includes application-layer protocols that sit above transport protocols and should not themselves be considered "transport," but they are often or usually used by other application-layer protocols as a layer between applications and transport named “infrastructure protocols.” Current work in this category includes evolution, maintenance, and extensions to HTTP, Audio/Video Transport, and codec development. The WIT area also develops interactive human-to-human communication (see RFC 3550 (see RFC 3550 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc3550/) ) ). Groups in this category are working on things such as real-time web communications, teleconferencing, emergency services communication, internet telephony, and instant messaging. At least one of the WIT area ADs needs to have a good understanding of infrastructure and real-time application protocols. However, they are not expected to be experts on all or even most of these topics. Rather, they are expected to work well with WIT Area participants who are experts and to have enough familiarity with the principles involved to exercise their judgment about what should be done and why.
Because the transport protocol part of the WIT area working groups often have common interests with IRTF research groups, especially ICCRG, MAPRG, and PANRG, familiarity with these research groups and their subject areas is helpful. Having at least one WIT Area AD with some background in the broader research community is also helpful. There are also open-source communities that implement transport area-related protocols which are beneficial to have contact with.
The AD mostly responsible for transport protocols parts of the WIT area will manage and recruit volunteers in order to maintain the Transport Area Document Review Triage Team (“TSV triage team”) and the Transport Area Review Team (TSV-ART). The TSV triage team provides support for the ADs by assigning document reviews to TSV-ART, and TSV-ART provides reviews on request and during Last Call that can be used by the ADs as input for their ballot positions. The ADs may delegate any tasks that can be delegated, but the ADs themselves still have the ultimate responsibility to ensure that transport considerations are appropriately taken into account during IESG Evaluation.
Having an overall architectural view of security and privacy, NAT and Firewall, encapsulation and tunneling, and higher-layer technologies are of added value.
The WIT Area often discusses topics that involve other SDOs. As a result, the set of WIT ADs needs to include the ability and experience to relate to a wide range of non-IETF organizations, such as the W3C, 3GPP, and ITU-T.
Together, the WIT ADs are expected to organize their workload, e.g., document review, email discussions as follow-up to document review, IESG emails, WG management, etc., in such a way that the average workload for each AD is about 20 to 30 hours per week.