- Support for IETF transport protocol standardisation at the July 2025 Plenary Meeting
Cybersecurity/Network and Information security
Development of new IETF secure and resilient standards are important for a digital society. Since the last IETF plenary meeting 74 documents had been approved for publication in the last quarter and 83 RFCs had been published. Two new IAB workshops were announced: Joint IAB/W3C Workshop on Age-Based Restrictions on Content Access and an IAB Workshop on IP Geolocation. The importance of standards was evident in serval meetings co-located with IETF-123. This including meetings with policy and regulators, a meeting on Multi-Stakeholder Forum on Internet Standards Deployment accompanied by an IEPG presentation by Rüdiger Martin of the Internet Governance Team from DG-CNECT, EU. This outlines plans around NIS2, and sought to develop understanding of challenges and barriers, provide timelines for deployments of protocols at scale and best current practice. The transport system is primarily concerned with robustness and resilience to disruption of the Internet service. IETF participants had various insights into the roll-out of new standards and the implications of the new regulatory landscape.
- Travel Support for the Montreal Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) plenary meeting
5G and Beyond (6G)
The IETF is the principal Internet SDO. IETF standards and guidelines are important to Broadband Infrastructure, ensuring resilience and security of Internet data. The standards published by the IETF define the software, protocols, and practices implemented by equipment vendors and operators. When adopted by industry, these standards will be deployed by international companies such as Apple, Google, Meta, Cloudflare and others. Specifications in the working groups for which I am the responsible Area Director include: Differentiated Services, new transport protocol mechanisms and the effects of pervasive encryption, protocol design, network infrastructure operation. It is important that new specifications consider user privacy, security, resilience and robustness to build the next generation of Internet applications and service.
Value of Research
This was a one-shot contribution to provide travel support for participation to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and specifically participation at the July 2025 plenary meeting in Madrid. I attended this meeting as an Internet Transport expert contributing work and progressing standards to support the evolution of the Internet and its support for enhanced resilience, authentication and privacy.
