IETF 96

The IETF meetings are relatively packed events lasting over a week, and it’s just not possible to attend every session. Inevitably each attendee follows their own interests and participates in sessions that are relevant and interesting to them. I do much the same when I attend IETF meetings, and from…


Hosts vs Networks

There are a number of ways to view the relationship between hosts and the network in the Internet. One view is that this is an example of two sets of cooperating entities that share a common goal: hosts and the network both want content to be delivered. Both have an…


Leaping Seconds

Time, as measured according to the Earth’s rotation, is getting slower. If we want 86,400 seconds to measure precisely one rotation of the earth on its axis then over time each second will get longer. Instead, we define a second as a fixed unit of time based on atomic vibrations…


What is Google Up To?

The astonishing rise and rise of the fortunes of Google has been one of the major features of both social and business life of the early 21st century. In the same way that Microsoft transformed the computer market into a mainstream consumer product through its Windows and Office software products…


Open Season

In June 2016 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) hosted a meeting of ministers to consider the state of the Digital Economy. The central message from this meeting was the message that: “Governments must act faster to help people and firms to make greater use of the Internet…


DNS Privacy

The DNS is normally a relatively open protocol that smears its data (which is your data and mine too!) far and wide. Little wonder that the DNS is used in many ways, not just as a mundane name resolution protocol, but as a data channel for surveillance and as a…


Fragmenting IPv6

The design of IPv6 represented a relatively conservative evolutionary step of the Internet protocol. Mostly, it’s just IPv4 with significantly larger address fields. Mostly, but not completely, as there were some changes. IPv6 changed the boot process to use auto-configuration and multicast to perform functions that were performed by ARP…


Declaring IPv6 an “Internet Standard”

I’ve already shared my thoughts following a session of the IPv4 Sunset Working Group at IETF 95 that considered whether to declare IPv4 an “Historic” specification. Of course, as one would expect for a meeting of a Standards Development Organization (SDO), that wasn’t the only standards process discussion through the…


IPv6 and the Internet of Things

It has often been claimed that IPv6 and the Internet of Things are strongly aligned, to the extent that claims are made they are mutually reliant. An Internet of Things needs the massively expanded protocol address space that only IPv6 can provide, while IPv6 needs to identify a compelling use…


Declaring IPv4 “Historic”

At the IETF 95 meeting at the start of April I was in a meeting of the IPv4 Sunset Working Group, and heard Lee Howard present on a proposal that recommended that IP version 4, or to be specific, that the technical protocol specification documented in RFC 791, be declared…