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