Standardization

Standardization Henning Schulzrinne Dept. of Computer Science Columbia University Fall 2003

Standards • Mandatory vs. voluntary • Allowed to use vs. likely to sell • Example: health & safety standards UL listing for electrical appliances, fire codes • Telecommunications and networking always focus of standardization • 1865: International Telegraph Union (ITU) • 1956: International Telephone and Telegraph Consultative Committee (CCITT) • Five major organizations: • ITU for lower layers, multimedia collaboration • IEEE for LAN standards (802.x) • IETF for network, transport & some applications • W3C for web-related technology (XML, SOAP) • ISO for media content (MPEG)

Who makes the rules? - ITU • ITU = ITU-T (telecom standardization) + ITU-R (radio) + development • http://www.itu.int • 14 study groups • produce Recommendations: • E: overall network operation, telephone service (E.164) • G: transmission system and media, digital systems and networks (G.711) • H: audiovisual and multimedia systems (H.323) • I: integrated services digital network (I.210); includes ATM • V: data communications over the telephone network (V.24) • X: Data networks and open system communications • Y: Global information infrastructure and internet protocol aspects

ITU • Initially, national delegations • Members: state, sector, associate • Membership fees (> 10,500 SFr) • Now, mostly industry groups doing work • Initially, mostly (international) telephone services • Now, transition from circuit-switched to packet-switched universe & lower network layers (optical) • Documents cost SFr, but can get three freebies for each email address

IETF • IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) • see RFC 3233 (“Defining the IETF”) • Formed 1986, but earlier predecessor organizations (1979-) • RFCs date back to 1969 • Initially, largely research organizations and universities, now mostly R&D labs of equipment vendors and ISPs • International, but 2/3 United States • meetings every four months • about 300 companies participating in meetings • but Cisco, Ericsson, Lucent, Nokia, etc. send large delegations

IETF • Supposed to be engineering, i.e., translation of well-understood technology  standards • make choices, ensure interoperability • reality: often not so well defined • Most development work gets done in working groups (WGs) • specific task, then dissolved (but may last 10 years…) • typically, small clusters of authors, with large peanut gallery • open mailing list discussion for specific problems • interim meetings (1-2 days) and IETF meetings (few hours) • published as Internet Drafts (I-Ds) • anybody can publish draft-somebody-my-new-protocol • also official working group documents (draft-ietf-wg-*) • versioned (e.g., draft-ietf-avt-rtp-10.txt) • automatically disappear (expire) after 6 months

IETF process • WG develops  WG last call  IETF last call  approval (or not) by IESG  publication as RFC • IESG (Internet Engineering Steering Group) consists of area directors – they vote on proposals • areas = applications, general, Internet, operations and management, routing, security, sub-IP, transport • Also, Internet Architecture Board (IAB) • provides architectural guidance • approves new working groups • process appeals

IETF activities • general (3): ipr, nomcom, problem • applications (25): crisp, geopriv, impp, ldapbis, lemonade, opes, provreg, simple, tn3270e, usefor, vpim, webdav, xmpp • internet (18) = IPv4, IPv6, DNS, DHCP: dhc, dnsext, ipoib, itrace, mip4, nemo, pana, zeroconf • oam (22) = SNMP, RADIUS, DIAMETER: aaa, v6ops, netconf, … • routing (13): forces, ospf, ssm, udlr, … • security (18): idwg, ipsec, openpgp, sasl, smime, syslog, tls, xmldsig, … • subip (5) = “layer 2.5”: ccamp, ipo, mpls, tewg • transport (26): avt (RTP), dccp, enum, ieprep, iptel, megaco, mmusic (RTSP), nsis, rohc, sip, sipping (SIP), spirits, tsvwg

RFCs • Originally, “Request for Comment” • now, mostly standards documents that are well settled • published RFCs never change • always ASCII (plain text), sometimes PostScript • anybody can submit RFC, but may be delayed by review (“end run avoidance”) • see April 1 RFCs (RFC 1149, 3251, 3252) • accessible at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/ and http://www.rfc-editor.org/

IETF process issues • Can take several years to publish a standard • see draft-ietf-problem-issue-statement • Relies on authors and editors to keep moving • often, busy people with “day jobs”  spurts three times a year • Lots of opportunities for small groups to delay things • Original idea of RFC standards-track progression: • Proposed Standard (PS) = kind of works • Draft Standard (DS) = solid, interoperability tested (2 interoperable implementations for each feature), but not necessarily widely used • Standard (S) = well tested, widely deployed

IETF process issues • Reality: very few protocols progress beyond PS • and some widely-used protocols are only I-Ds • In addition: Informational, Best Current Practice (BCP), Experimental, Historic • Early IETF: simple protocols, stand-alone • TCP, HTTP, DNS, BGP, … • Now: systems of protocols, with security, management, configuration and scaling • lots of dependencies  wait for others to do their job

Other Internet standards organizations • ISOC (Internet Society) • legal umbrella for IETF, development work • IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) • assigns protocol constants • NANOG (North American Network Operators Group) (http://www.nanog.org) • operational issues • holds nice workshop with measurement and “real world” papers • RIPE, ARIN, APNIC • regional IP address registries  dole out chunks of address space to ISPs • routing table management

ICANN • Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers • manages IP address space (at top level) • DNS top-level domains (TLD) • ccTLD: country codes (.us, .uk, …) • gTLDs (.com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .net, and .org) • uTLD (unsponsored): .biz, .info, .name, and .pro • sTLD (sponsored): .aero, .coop, and .museum • actual domains handled by registrars

Standardization