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Independent Submission P. Eardley
Request for Comments: 6417 BT
Category: Informational L. Eggert
ISSN: 2070-1721 Nokia
M. Bagnulo
UC3M
R. Winter
NEC Europe
November 2011
How to Contribute Research Results to Internet Standardization
Abstract
The development of new technology is driven by scientific research.
The Internet, with its roots in the ARPANET and NSFNet, is
no exception. Many of the fundamental, long-term improvements to the
architecture, security, end-to-end protocols and management of the
Internet originate in the related academic research communities.
Even shorter-term, more commercially driven extensions are oftentimes
derived from academic research. When interoperability is required,
the IETF standardizes such new technology. Timely and relevant
standardization benefits from continuous input and review from the
academic research community.
For an individual researcher, it can however be quite puzzling how to
begin to most effectively participate in the IETF and arguably to a
much lesser degree, the IRTF. The interactions in the IETF are
much different than those in academic conferences, and effective
participation follows different rules. The goal of this document is
to highlight such differences and provide a rough guideline that will
hopefully enable researchers new to the IETF to become successful
contributors more quickly.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This is a contribution to the RFC Series, independently of any other
RFC stream. The RFC Editor has chosen to publish this document at
its discretion and makes no statement about its value for
implementation or deployment. Documents approved for publication by
the RFC Editor are not a candidate for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.
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RFC 6417 Contributing Research to the IETF November 2011
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6417.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................3
2. Is the IETF the Right Venue? ....................................4
3. How to Get the IETF to Start Work on Your Proposal? .............6
3.1. Identify the Right Part of the IETF ........................6
3.2. Build a Community ..........................................6
3.3. Outline Your Protocol ......................................7
3.4. Establish a New Working Group ..............................8
4. How to Increase the Chances that the IETF Successfully
Standardizes Your Proposal ......................................8
4.1. Commit Enough Time, Energy, and Perseverance ...............8
4.2. Be Open and Focus Out ......................................9
4.3. Seek Resolution, Not Perfection ...........................10
4.4. Implement .................................................10
5. Examples .......................................................11
5.1. Multipath TCP .............................................11
5.2. Congestion Exposure .......................................12
6. Security Considerations ........................................13
7. Acknowledgments ................................................13
8. Informative References .........................................13
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1. Introduction
In telecommunications, standards are essential. More often than not,
technology interoperability requires an agreement on a single
standard for a given problem. However, unlike most research,
standards developments are driven by particular real-world problems
and require solutions that are not only theoretically correct, but
need to be implementable with state-of-the-art technology in a cost-
effective manner, and must be incrementally deployable in the actual
Internet by the involved stakeholders. In other words, standards
should be both theoretically correct and practically applicable. In
the academic world, the former is often more important than the
latter!
In the IETF, a practically applicable solution that has some well-
defined and acceptable deficiencies trumps a theoretically complete
and optimal solution that cannot be deployed. Likewise, a solution
to an interesting theoretical problem that does not exist in the
deployed Internet at large does not require urgent standardization.
Finally, standardization oftentimes focuses on piecemeal improvements
to existing technology in order to enhance secondary aspects, which
does not excite an academic researcher looking to solve juicy
problems.
These differences between academic research and Internet
standardization are the main reason why many researchers initially
struggle when they begin to participate in the IETF. Symptoms of
this struggle occur, for example:
o for ideas that are too far outside the IETF's areas of current
work
o for ideas that are too high-level for the IETF to begin protocol-
level work on
o for proposals that solve problems that are not expected to arise
for a very long time
o if there is a reluctance to give others a say in how a research
idea is being made concrete, or giving over change control
entirely
o if there is a feeling that the IETF "does not listen" to them or
does not have "the right people"
o if there seems to be no working group or other venue to bring the
work to
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o if the researchers are not interested in topics such as security,
performance, and operational management -- topics that the IETF
will consider carefully
o when the process seems too time consuming
o when the researchers do not have the resources to keep the IETF
effort active for an extended period of time
o if there is not a convincing enough argument for the IETF to start
working on something, despite great simulation results
o if the research idea is just not implementable in today's Internet
This document attempts to give some basic advice that researchers
might want to take into account when deciding to approach the IETF
with their ideas, in order to improve their success probability. It
is intended to complement the more general advice in [RFC4144] about
"How to Gain Prominence and Influence in Standards Organizations".
Other, more general advice and detailed explanations of the structure
and inner workings of the IETF can be found in "The Tao of IETF"
[RFC4677].
The authors have been involved in several research projects,
including collaborative ones, which have sought to standardize some
of their results at the IETF, and we hope to pass on some advice
(sometimes that we have learned the hard way!). The advice is split
into three groups: before you approach the IETF; how to get the IETF
to start work on your proposal; and finally how to increase the
chances of success once work has begun.
2. Is the IETF the Right Venue?
A researcher should consider whether the IETF is the right venue
before bringing a proposal to it. A way to do so is to imagine that
the IETF has standardized your proposal and it has been deployed, and
ask yourself two questions:
1. How would the Internet be better?
2. What Internet nodes would have been upgraded?
It is very important to have a clear explanation about the motivation
for your proposal: what would its benefits be? What problem does it
solve? Many ideas do not bring a clear benefit to the Internet in
the near term (of course they may still be fine pieces of research!).
In the past, the IETF has often developed protocols that ended up not
being used, so it now thinks harder about the benefits before
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starting new work and makes sure that it solves a current,
significant problem rather than one that may theoretically arise in
the future. It is best to be specific about what improvement your
proposal would make and the use cases in which this would be seen.
It is also important to have a simple description of what additions
or changes are needed and to which nodes (be they end-hosts, routers,
middleboxes, etc.). Is it substituting for an existing IETF protocol
or supplementing one? Again, it is best to be specific: Do both ends
need to adopt the new protocol? Can it fall back or interoperate
with the existing IETF protocol? Do the "first movers" (the first
nodes that include your protocol) get an improvement, or do the "last
movers" gain most? What assumptions do you make about the network or
host (perhaps that the host is multi-homed or there are no
middleboxes on the path)? While thinking about these things, it is
also worthwhile considering operational practices and business
models. If you will likely break some of these, you will inevitably
face some opposition in the IETF.
If it is hard to answer these questions, it may indicate that the
idea is too high-level or abstract for the IETF. Then it may be
better to approach the IRTF (the research arm of the IETF); the IETF
needs a specific protocol-level proposal before it can begin work,
while the IRTF considers work that is not yet mature enough for
standardization. Another danger is that the IETF is the wrong
standards body, as a different one would need to standardize your
proposal.
If your idea involves replacing several IETF protocols and/or
upgrading several types of nodes simultaneously, it is probably best
to rethink: the IETF finds it almost impossible to handle radical,
"clean slate" proposals that change lots of things at once. Perhaps
you can trim off a subset of your idea that's a smaller initial step
requiring only an incremental change to an existing protocol, but you
need to consider whether it is still useful.
Finally, before bringing a proposal to the IETF, you need to be aware
that there are intellectual property implications. For example, it
will affect any patents you want to file. Less obviously, you grant
the IETF the right to publish your contribution and you should inform
the IETF if your proposal is covered by a patent. For more
information about the rights you grant to the IETF, the best thing to
read is the IETF's "Note Well" [NoteWell] and the documents linked to
from there.
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3. How to Get the IETF to Start Work on Your Proposal?
Having decided that the IETF is the right venue, you now need to
persuade the IETF to start work on your idea. We discuss three steps
that should help; they can be done in parallel. We then briefly
discuss how to form a new working group (WG), if that is necessary.
3.1. Identify the Right Part of the IETF
The IETF is a large organization; therefore, you need to communicate
with the right part of it. The IETF is organized in areas such as
routing, security, or transport. Within those areas, working groups
are responsible for a specific topic. The IETF consists of over 100
WGs. So, a good step is to identify whether there is already a WG
suitable for your work.
If yes, then join the WG's mailing list and send email and perhaps
write an Internet-Draft. A WG's current set of specific items is
defined in its "Charter"; be aware that if your proposal falls
outside the WG's current charter, then it would have to be extended
before formal work could begin. Most WGs think about re-chartering
every year or two, although most allow for some limited discussion on
items outside their current charter.
If no suitable WG exists, then you should identify the right Area.
The WGs are clustered into "Areas" with a common theme such as
security, with one or two Area Directors in charge of each Area. You
may have to get a new WG created within the most relevant Area; this
is a significantly difficult step (see below).
Finding the right WG is akin to finding the right conference or
journal to submit to. While a poor choice of conference will get
your paper rejected as irrelevant, the IETF is friendlier, as most WG
Chairs and Area Directors will try to redirect your work to a better
WG, if you choose poorly. However, ending up with the right "venue"
is critical, as only then will you collaborate with the right group
of people.
3.2. Build a Community
Standards require agreement and approval by a wide range of people.
Therefore you need to persuade others of the merits of your idea. In
practice you need to go further and persuade others to do work. At a
minimum, this will be to thoroughly review your proposal and
preferably it will be to develop and test it with you. The IETF
community needs to see evidence of wider support, interest, and
commitment. A lack of reaction means work will not go forward
(silence is not consent!). At an early stage, support could be
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demonstrated through comments on the mailing list. It is a very good
idea to have some Internet-Drafts jointly authored with people from
beyond your research team, perhaps an industry player. For example,
you could develop a "use cases" document with a "user", such as an
operator.
Working with others has the extra benefit that it will help to
clarify your idea and explain better its benefits and how it works.
There are many experts in the IETF who can help stress test the idea
technically and advise about process and culture. You need to get
some of them involved as early as possible.
It may well be worth trying to hold an informal session at an IETF
meeting. This can help build a community of interest for your idea;
see the advice in [BAR-BOF].
3.3. Outline Your Protocol
You also need to describe your proposal in a way that others can
understand. Your initial document should outline the protocol. It
is counter-productive to detail every aspect, unless the protocol is
incredibly simple. Firstly, too much detail swamps people with
information that they cannot process. Most people understand things
by learning about them several times at increasing levels of detail.
Secondly, providing only an outline makes people feel that they have
a chance of making worthwhile suggestions and changes, so they are
more likely to actively engage with you. Thirdly, working out
details is generally something that a wider group of people is better
at than an isolated individual. Fourthly, in order for the IETF to
start work, it is more important to convince the IETF that there is a
problem that it needs to solve than to convince it about the merits
of your solution.
A good idea is to document a "protocol model", as described in
[RFC4101]: "a short description of the system in overview form ... to
answer three basic questions: 1. What problem is the protocol trying
to achieve? 2. What messages are being transmitted and what do they
mean? 3. What are the important, but unobvious, features of the
protocol?"
It is best to send your contributions in the form of an Internet-
Draft (I-D). While it may seem a burden to convert your nice paper
or slides into the idiosyncratic format of an I-D, this is the format
that IETF people are used to reading. Also, extracting the IETF-
relevant parts of publications into an I-D will often help to
identify aspects that need more work by the IETF, such as protocol
details glossed over.
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3.4. Establish a New Working Group
You only need to establish a new WG if the idea falls outside the
scope of existing WGs. Establishing a new WG nearly always requires
a specific session, called a "BoF" (Birds of a Feather), at one of
the IETF's face-to-face meetings. Here the pros and cons of the
proposed WG are debated. As part of the preparation for the BoF, you
need to:
o Build a community (see above)
o Document the benefits: for example, a problem statement and/or use
cases
o Document the architecture: for example covering assumptions and
requirements on a solution
o Suggest specific work items for the proposed WG, typically the
protocol to be standardized and the supporting informational
documents
Getting approval to hold a BoF and running a successful BoF meeting
are both quite difficult. Working with someone experienced and
reading the guidance in [RFC5434] are highly recommended.
4. How to Increase the Chances that the IETF Successfully Standardizes
Your Proposal
Congratulations, you got the IETF to agree to start working on your
proposal. Now it only remains to do the actual work! In this
section, we give some advice about ways of working that will increase
the chances that the standardization runs smoothly.
4.1. Commit Enough Time, Energy, and Perseverance
Those new to standards bodies may be surprised how long and how much
effort it takes to standardize something.
Success at the IETF requires active participation: to convince others
your idea is worthwhile, to build momentum, to gain consensus.
Although IETF work is done mainly through mailing lists, in practice,
face-to-face time is critical, especially for new or substantial
work. If possible, go to the three IETF meetings a year.
It takes quite a long time for a proposal to turn into an IETF
standard, even if the proposal is mature when it is first presented.
There are many steps: building a community of interest, convincing
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the IETF to start work, working through suggestions from technical
experts and incorporating their improvements, gaining consensus,
getting detailed reviews (any IETF publication gets significantly
more reviews than an academic publication), going through the formal
IETF approval process, and so on. Even if you can work full time on
the proposal, effort is required from other people who can't. Also,
the IETF tends to work in intensive bursts, with activity
concentrated in the run-up to and then at the IETF meetings, with
lulls of low activity in between.
The IETF proceeds by "rough consensus". Unlike some other standards
bodies, there is no voting and no top-down process from requirements
to architecture to protocol. The downside of this is that the IETF
is not good at making decisions. Hence you need to persevere and
guard against decisions unwinding. On the other hand, if the
consensus is to reject your proposal or there is little interest in
it, persevering is likely to be a waste of time -- you should
probably give up or restart at Section 2.
All this means that it takes a considerable length of time to
complete something at the IETF. Two years is probably a minimum.
So, although a typical three-year research project sounds like plenty
of time to do standardization, if you haven't already raised the idea
within the first year, you're probably too late to complete
standardization before your project ends. Since it's quite likely
that IETF standardization won't be finished when your project ends,
it is particularly important to convince others to help, so that the
work is more likely to be completed afterwards.
4.2. Be Open and Focus Out
It is helpful to come to the IETF with an open mind-set.
Co-authorship is good. Some standards bodies value trophy authors,
who indicate their support but don't actually do any work. In the
IETF, it is much better if co-authors are actually investing cycles
on developing the proposal, whereas simple indications of support can
be made on the mailing list or at the meetings.
In particular, if the IETF is going to standardize something, then in
effect, it takes ownership; it is no longer "yours". Indeed, a good
milestone of success is when your individual document becomes a WG
draft, as then it is owned by the WG. The research mentality is a
bit different, as it prizes authorship and confidentiality until
publication.
It is very important to be open to working with others. One specific
reason is to get help on aspects beyond your expertise or beyond what
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you've had time to think about -- perhaps how to make your protocol
more secure, or how to ensure it is congestion-friendly, or how it
impacts network management. The IETF ensures that any protocol it
standardizes has thought carefully about such aspects.
Also, the IETF works by collaboration. For example, there may be two
proposals to solve a problem. In academia their proponents may treat
each other as rivals and for example write "related work" sections
that point out flaws and shortcomings of the opposition. At the
IETF, they will soon work together on a common document, typically a
synthesis of the competing proposals, and be sensitive to each other
in order to help build consensus. You will also have to get support,
or at least not vehement opposition, from IETF people working on
other topics. So you need to be aware of what else the IETF is doing
(in case your proposal conflicts) and what other problems exist in
the Internet today (in case your proposal exacerbates them).
Finally, collaborative research projects sometimes find it difficult
to be open to working with others. Firstly, such projects typically
have a consortium agreement about confidentiality -- it must not
prevent you from engaging properly day-to-day with people outside the
project. Secondly, you may have to spend considerable effort on
intra-project coordination -- but, an individual researcher only has
so much energy and enthusiasm for collaborating, so if you spend a
lot of time liaising between different groups within your project,
then you have little left for working with the IETF.
4.3. Seek Resolution, Not Perfection
The research mind-set is often to investigate very thoroughly all
possible details about an idea -- to seek perfection -- sometimes
with no particular deadline. The IETF mind-set is to get something
done and out there that works, albeit imperfectly; if people find it
useful, then there will be another iteration to improve it, probably
to meet needs that only become apparent on widescale deployment. The
philosophy is to find a reasonable solution to the problem that
currently exists. Time spent over-optimizing may simply mean that
the solution has been superseded (perhaps the problem has been solved
in some other way, or perhaps the problem was so significant that a
different approach had to be found to avoid the problem).
4.4. Implement
The IETF is very impressed by actual implementations: "running code".
It helps smooth the standards process, it helps people believe it
really works, and it helps you and others discover any issues. An
implementation that others can download and try is extremely helpful
in getting your protocol actually deployed -- presumably, that is
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your real objective, not simply to get an IETF standard! In the
longer term, you may need to think about how to get it incorporated
in the Linux kernel, for instance.
Overall, it is very hard to get a protocol in actual widespread use.
There are far more IETF protocols on paper than in use.
5. Examples
In this section, we include some examples in which the authors have
been deeply involved and have managed (we believe) to bring the
research output of a collaborative research project successfully into
the IETF.
5.1. Multipath TCP
Multipath TCP (MPTCP) enables a regular TCP connection to use
multiple paths simultaneously. It extends TCP to allow the use of
multiple IP addresses by each endpoint. This work is one output of
the Trilogy research project which was brought to the IETF for
standardization, and it is currently making good progress. We
provide a brief overview of the steps taken.
The first stage was doing some early socialization of the main ideas
of MPTCP. Presentations were made in several relevant WGs: the
Routing Research Group (July 2008) and the Transport Area Open
meeting (July 2008 and March 2009). In addition, a mailing list was
created, open to anyone who was interested in discussing Multipath-
TCP-related issues in the IETF context, and a public Web page was
created containing Multipath-TCP-related material, including papers,
Internet-Drafts, presentations, and code. The feedback received was
encouraging enough to continue with the effort of bringing the work
to the IETF.
Once we verified that the proposed ideas had potential traction in
the IETF, the next step was to identify the proper venue for the
proposed work. There were two choices, namely, to go for a BoF, with
a view to a new WG, or to try to add additional work items to an
existing WG, in particular TCPM seemed a good candidate. After
talking to the Area Directors, it seemed that having a BoF was the
right approach, at least for the initial discussion stage. So, a BoF
proposal was submitted to the Transport ADs for the IETF 75 meeting
held in Stockholm in July 2009. The initial BoF proposal was crafted
by Trilogy people, but was sent to the open mailing list for
discussion and modification from the rest of the community. The BoF
request was approved and the MPTCP BoF was held at the IETF 75
meeting.
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The general feedback received during the BoF was that there was
enough interest and energy in the community to do this work within
the IETF. A first charter draft was posted on the mailing list for
comments a couple of months after the BoF. After a month or so of
charter discussion on the mailing list, the MPTCP working group was
created in October 2009. The charter includes deliverables due to
March 2011.
The MPTCP working group has, so far, made significant progress and
most of the milestones have been delivered on schedule [MPTCP].
5.2. Congestion Exposure
Congestion Exposure enables sending end-hosts to inform the network
about the congestion encountered by previous packets on the same
flow. This allows the network devices to act upon the congestion
information and the perceived user behavior. Like the MPTCP work, it
is an output of the Trilogy research project and has been
successfully brought to the IETF. We next describe the steps
followed to do so.
In this case, early socialization included presentations at the
Internet Congestion Control Research Group and the Internet Area
meeting at the IETF 75 meeting in July 2009, the creation of an open
mailing list to discuss Congestion Exposure related issues in the
IETF, and posting the related materials such as papers, Internet
drafts, and code in a public web page. In addition, an informal,
open meeting (sometimes called a Bar-BoF in IETF parlance) was held
during the IETF 75 meeting.
After processing the feedback received in the Bar-BoF, a BoF proposal
was submitted to the Internet Area ADs for the IETF 76 meeting in
November 2009. The BoF was accepted and was held as planned. While
the feedback received in the BoF was positive, the IESG was uncertain
about chartering a working group on this topic. (The IESG is the
IETF's management body and consists of all the Area Directors.) In
order to address the remaining concerns of the IESG, another BoF was
held at the following IETF meeting.
After much debate, the CONEX WG was approved by the IESG, but the
scope of its charter was limited compared with the original proposal.
This was due to some concerns regarding the proposed allocation of
the last bit in the IPv4 header. The CONEX WG serves as a good
example to illustrate the kind of compromise that is necessary when
research aspiration meets Internet standardization. The CONEX WG
[CONEX] held its first meeting at the IETF 78 meeting in July 2010.
Its charter contains deliverables through November 2011.
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6. Security Considerations
This document has no known security implications.
7. Acknowledgments
Part of this work was funded by the Trilogy Project [TRILOGY], a
research project supported by the European Commission under its
Seventh Framework Program.
Similar material was accepted for publication in ACM CCR, July 2011
[CCR].
8. Informative References
[BAR-BOF] Eggert, L. and G. Camarillo, "Considerations for Having a
Successful "Bar BOF" Side Meeting", Work in Progress,
August 2011.
[CCR] "How to Contribute Research Results to Internet
Standardization". Marcelo Bagnulo, Philip Eardley, Lars
Eggert and Rolf Winter. ACM Computer Communication
Review (CCR), Vol. 41, No. 3, July 2011.
[CONEX] "Congestion Exposure working group",
http://tools.ietf.org/wg/conex/.
[MPTCP] "Multipath TCP working group",
http://tools.ietf.org/wg/mptcp/.
[NoteWell] "Note Well", http://www.ietf.org/about/note-well.html.
[RFC4101] Rescorla, E. and IAB, "Writing Protocol Models", RFC
4101, June 2005.
[RFC4144] Eastlake, D., "How to Gain Prominence and Influence in
Standards Organizations", RFC 4144, September 2005.
[RFC4677] Hoffman, P. and S. Harris, "The Tao of IETF - A Novice's
Guide to the Internet Engineering Task Force", RFC 4677,
September 2006.
[RFC5434] Narten, T., "Considerations for Having a Successful
Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) Session", RFC 5434, February
2009.
[TRILOGY] "Trilogy Project", http://www.trilogy-project.org/.
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Authors' Addresses
Philip Eardley
BT
Adastral Park, Martlesham Heath
Ipswich
England
EMail: philip.eardley@bt.com
Lars Eggert
Nokia Research Center
P.O. Box 407
Nokia Group 00045
Finland
Phone: +358 50 48 24461
EMail: lars.eggert@nokia.com
URI: http://research.nokia.com/people/lars_eggert/
Marcelo Bagnulo
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Av. Universidad 30
Madrid
Spain
EMail: marcelo@it.uc3m.es
Rolf Winter
NEC Europe
Heidelberg
Germany
EMail: rolf.winter@neclab.eu
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