Connections

Ever wondered how the Internet’s protocols and standards come to life? This talk dives into the IETF, its ethos, the process behind RFCs and Internet Drafts, and how the IETF community drives innovation in networking. We’ll also explore the role of organizations like IIESoc and INTC, highlighting their contributions and activities. Whether you’re new to the IETF world or just curious about how things work behind the scenes, this session will give you a solid introduction to the world of internet standards.

This talk gives a quick rundown of some of the hottest topics being discussed in various Routing Area Working Groups, straight from the incoming Routing Area Director. It highlights key discussions and innovations, offering insights into where you might want to focus or contribute. Whether you’re looking to stay in the loop or actively help shape the future of routing technologies, this session will guide you through the most relevant ongoing conversations in the IETF Routing Area.

Curious about what’s buzzing at IETF 122? This talk will give you a quick rundown of the hottest topics, from new Working Group (WG) proposals and Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions to recently formed WGs and the most active discussions happening across WGs and Research Groups (RGs). Whether you’re a regular IETF attendee or new to the scene, we’ll also share some tips on how to engage, participate, and make the most of IETF 122. Join us for an inside look at what’s shaping the future of the Internet!

This talk will discuss the intricacies of debugging and monitoring during the deployment of IPv6 at NITK Surathkal. This presentation delves into the real-world challenges encountered during the migration, with a particular focus on the tools and strategies used for troubleshooting network issues in the IPv6 environment. We will highlight the debugging processes, including identifying and resolving issues related to routing, address assignment, router advertisements, dual stack support, and performance, as well as the monitoring frameworks that were set up to ensure smooth operation during the transition.

Besides IPv6 deployment, the talk will cover concurrent work on setting up  as BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) and RPKI (Resource Public Key Infrastructure) at NITK. These protocols introduced additional layers of complexity to the deployment, and we will share insights into the issues faced and the solutions implemented to ensure robust, secure, and efficient routing during the transition.

In the last decade, the backbone networks across different kind of networks like Internet Service Providers, Cloud Providers and enterprises have experienced exponential traffic growth. This demand coupled with the motivation to reduce operational cost has led to the transformation of the backbone networks. This talk will cover  some of the most common transformations seen in the last decade such as migration from OSPF to ISIS, Converged core,  Fabric/Brick architecture inside a POP etc. The talk will further cover important innovations in this area  such as Segment Routing, Flood reflectors and Flood reduction etc.

Normalization of Network attributes and parameters in an Overlay network is multi-dimensional in nature. The overlay solutions pan across end-host-devices/Virtual-Machines/servers/workloads; leveraging tunnel-based fabric; which in-turn is provisioned over native IP-fabric, hate to call it underlay (under belly) though. Further up, the overlay connectivity span can extend beyond a fabric (geographically separated or collocated) via a Datacenter Interconnect or inter-site VPNs between campus sites (buildings, branch offices etc.). Datacenter/Campus/enterprise/Cloud deployments are privy to the impending normalization. Though this normalization need is generic across all parameters/functionalities like path-tracing/quality-of-service, MTU is one of the important parameters which needs attention and is talked about in this literature. As a specific, a miss in MTU normalization can impact usage of network and computational resources of the networking elements, including underlay routers/switches as the packet paths may take tread a slow path. One of the ways to facilitate a solution to this problem is identifying the mismatch in all layers. And a subtle way of doing it is to trace the ICMP errors generated in the underlay network and percolating it to end-hosts.

The presentation describes what is slicing in networking, why is slicing needed, what are the considerations in implementing network slices and how is the industry approaching the technology.

Observability has become a crucial aspect of managing modern, complex systems—but what does it really mean, and how does it apply to networking? This talk starts by defining Observability and its key principles before diving into Network Observability, exploring how enterprises are moving beyond traditional monitoring to gain deeper, real-time insights into performance, reliability, and security. From there, we take a closer look at eBPF, breaking down what it is, why it matters, and how it works under the hood. We’ll explore real-world use cases where eBPF enhances observability, troubleshooting, and security, making it a game-changer for cloud-native and enterprise environments. Whether you’re new to observability or looking for a deeper dive into eBPF, this session will provide a clear roadmap to understanding and applying these technologies effectively.

The escalating demand for real-time applications such as cloud gaming and virtual reality presents unique challenges in managing network latency and throughput simultaneously. Traditional congestion control mechanisms, which primarily rely on packet loss as a signal, are inadequate for modern applications requiring high throughput and ultra-low latency. A pluggable implementation of the Low Latency, Low Loss, Scalable throughput (L4S) architecture using eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) programs to enhance the Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) mechanism. We specifically focus on replicating the L4S client functionality at the receiver end, which is crucial for the Accurate ECN (AccECN) protocol. By leveraging sched_cls eBPF programs, our design captures and manipulates packet flows at both ingress and egress points, enabling precise congestion feedback and efficient protocol negotiation directly from the data plane. Our approach ensures compatibility with existing network infrastructures and extends L4S benefits to devices operating on legacy kernels. Through this innovation, we aim to accelerate the adoption of L4S across varied network environments, enhancing the quality of experience for latency-sensitive applications without extensive system overhauls.

Edge computing, which brings computation and data storage closer to the location where it is needed, is crucial for supporting latency-sensitive applications, such as IoT, autonomous systems, and real-time analytics. The IETF can significantly benefit edge computing by providing standardized protocols and frameworks that ensure interoperability, scalability, and flexibility in edge computing environments. By leveraging IETF’s expertise in creating open, industry-adopted standards, edge orchestration can be improved to support a wide range of use cases, from 5G and IoT to AI-driven edge services. IETF’s work on topics such as network slicing, Quality of Service (QoS), traffic engineering, and dynamic resource allocation can enhance edge orchestration’s efficiency in delivering reliable services, minimizing network congestion, and ensuring seamless handovers between edge and core networks. Furthermore, IETF's emphasis on security standards can fortify edge environments, protecting data integrity and preventing unauthorized access. Overall, IETF's contribution is vital to ensuring that edge orchestration becomes a robust, scalable, and secure component in the next generation of network infrastructures.

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In this talk we try to emphasize some of the key Edge (RAN and Enterprise) usecases of Telco operators across the globe, challenges they face in its execution and how a joint effort between open source platforms like StarlingX, Nephio, and standard organization like ETSI, IETF, ORAN could provide the helping hands.

Due to high volume of requests on web servers from AI training engines for data, which the current robots.txt is unable to address effectively impacting them to serve others; the AIPref WG has been chartered to address it with an OPT OUT mechanism distinguishing service to AI versus humans. This talk summarises the current discussions in this WG. Thereafter, it points out the imbalance in representation, few considerations that are local to India. Lastly, it encourages greater participation from the policy, networking and AI and ML community from India and other possibly impacted geographies in this WG at this juncture.

Existing Media Dissemination such as HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) and DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) protocols often suffer from having to balance between Latency and Performance. Media over QUIC Transport (MOQT) has been proposed as a new solution in order to get the best of both worlds. We dive into Raven, an implementation of MOQT, to explain the inner workings of MOQT and critique it against other Media dissemination protocols.

We have been working on implementing the HTTPS YANG Notification WG internet draft and have been understanding topics related to netconf, yang and related. We have made the implementation open source of both the collector and publisher and have done performance analysis with varying bandwidth for different encoding. We have also integrated the system with kafka and influx db and used prometheus and grafana for the monitoring and stat collection.

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Under the guidance of the draft's authors, Mahesh and Kent, we have written a draft to extend the current document to include CBOR encoding along with the existing JSON and XML encoding formats.

Attending our first IETF meeting in Brisbane was an eye-opening experience—both in terms of the technical depth of discussions and the collaborative nature of the community. In this talk, we’ll share our journeys as newcomers: how we prepared, what we found surprising, and the key takeaways that helped us navigate the working groups and hallway conversations. We’ll also discuss the challenges of getting up to speed with ongoing drafts, engaging in technical debates, and finding ways to contribute meaningfully. Whether you’re new to IETF or looking to help onboard fresh contributors, we hope our experiences and reflections will provide useful insights into making the most of an IETF meeting.

As India could be a potential venue for an IETF meeting, it’s crucial to look beyond the logistics and focus on leveraging such an opportunity for sustained engagement. This session will explore what it takes to ensure that an IETF meeting in India is not just a one-time event but a catalyst for long-term participation from the region. Our panelists will share insights from different perspectives—leadership, government initiatives, academia, industry, and community building.