2.2.2 Internet Architecture Board

Minutes for the Open Plenary of the Internet Architecture Board at the Washington, DC IETF Meeting.

Brian Carpenter, Chair of the IAB, opened the meeting with an overview of recent accomplishments of the IAB:

· Draft reports on the IAB security workshop has been published. Check out draft-iab-secwks-report-00.txt and draft-iab-secwks-sec-guidelines-00.txt.
· ISO 10646 is now on-line.
· The IAB approved formation of a Routing Research Group in the Internet Research Task Force, chaired by Sue Hares.
· Agreement between IETF and other standards setting organizations to inform each other when starting new work. This will help avoid overlap work and allow coordination between the various efforts relevant to Internet standards.
· Discussions starting on NATs, VPNs, etc. and their impact on the Internet architecture. Topics include relationship with IPv6 transition/coexistence, end-end services including security, etc.

Jon Postel, RFC Editor, reported on the RFC backlog; steady state is about 20 documents in the queue each month.

Jon Postel, Internet Assigned Number Authority, reported that U.S. government support for IANA and RFC Editor functions will be ending in September '98, and described the options being pursued going forward.

What the IANA (and RFC Editor) should be chartered to do:

· allocate IP address space
· allocate top-level-domain names
· allocate protocol parameters
· edit RFCs
· operate the root zone

The solution going forward should follow the basic principles of bottom up industry self-governance and ensure long term stability. Elements of a solution include:

· a home organization for the work, which might be ISOC or some new entity
· support from related organizations: address registries, name registries, protocol/standards activities (IETF)
· industry support

Jon then provided a rough outline of a new organization structure, with an independent board of directors, heavy involvement of related organizations, and an industry "support club." He will be posting a more detailed proposal in the near future.

Questions:

Christian Huitema: Why organizationally connect allocation of protocol and port numbers with editing RFCs?
Jon Postel: It is very convenient to closely align the function of editing RFCs and assigning protocol parameters, since one can often identify the need for number assignment while editing an RFC. However, funding does not necessarily have to be the same for both, and the RFC Editor role probably needs to stay closely aligned with the IETF.

Previous PageNext Page