Standardization

1
Standardization

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

2
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)

3
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

4
ITU

• Initially, national delegations
• Members state, sector, associate
• Membership fees (gt 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

5
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 RD 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

6
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

7
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

8
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

9
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/

10
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

11
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

12
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

13
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