As a reminder, the deadline for the IAB workshop on Stack Evolution in a
Middlebox Internet (SEMI) is coming up. Prospective participants are
invited to submit short (i.e., about two pages) position papers outlining
their views on one or more topics related to the scope of the workshop.
Authors and titles for position papers must be registered by Friday,
31 October 2014, but the deadline for complete position papers has been
extended by a week to Friday, 7 November 2014.
On behalf of the IAB,
Russ Housley
IAB Chair
On Sep 9, 2014, at 12:09 PM, IAB Chair wrote:
IAB Workshop on Stack Evolution in a Middlebox Internet (SEMI)
26-27 January 2015 – ETH Zürich, Switzerland
The Internet’s transport layer has ossified, squeezed between narrow
interfaces (from BSD sockets to pseudo-transport over HTTPS) and
increasing in-network modification of traffic by middleboxes that make
assumptions about the protocols running through them. This ossification
makes it difficult to innovate in the transport layer, through the
deployment of new protocols or the extension of existing ones. At the
same time, emerging applications require functionality that existing
protocols can provide only inefficiently, if at all.
To begin to address this problem, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB),
within the scope of its IP Stack Evolution Program, is organizing a
workshop to discuss approaches to de-ossifying transport, especially
with respect to interactions with middleboxes and new methods for
implementing transport protocols. Recognizing that the end-to-end
principle has long been compromised, we start with the fundamental
question of matching paths through the Internet with certain
characteristics to application and transport requirements. Which paths
through the Internet are actually available to applications? Which
transports can be used over these paths? How can applications cooperate
with network elements to improve path establishment and discovery? Can
common transport functionality and standardization help application
developers to implement and deploy such approaches in today’s Internet?
Could cooperative approaches give us a way to rebalance the Internet
back toward its end-to-end roots?
Topics
For this workshop we would like to consider topics that speak to these
questions, including the following:
- Development and deployment of transport-like features in application-
layer protocols
- Methods for discovery of path characteristics and protocol
availability along a path
- Methods for middlebox detection and characterization of middlebox
behavior and functionality
- Methods for NAT and middlebox traversal in the establishment of end-
to-end paths
- Mechanisms for cooperative path-endpoint signaling, and lessons
learned from existing approaches
- Economic considerations and incentives for cooperation in middlebox
deployment
We will explicitly focus on approaches that are incrementally deployable
within the present Internet.
The outcome of the workshop will be architectural and engineering
guidance on future work in the area, published as an IAB workshop
report, based on discussion of proposed approaches; future work will be
pursued within the IAB Stack Evolution Program. We will also explore
possible areas for standardization, e.g. new protocols that separate
signaling to and from on-path devices and common transport semantics
from the rest of the transport protocol; and for general guidance, e.g.
how transports as well as middleboxes can be designed and deployed to
achieve these goals.
Submission Instructions
Attendance at the workshop is by invitation. Prospective participants
are invited to submit short position papers outlining their views on one
or more topics related to the scope of the workshop. Position papers
will be published on the IAB website at:
http://www.iab.org/activities/workshops/semi/.
Submissions accepted at:
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=semi2015
Submission Deadline: 31 October 2014
Notification Deadline: 17 November 2014
Workshop Dates: 26-27 January 2015
Sponsored by the Internet Architecture Board, the Internet Society, and
ETH Zürich. Mirja Kühlewind and Brian Trammell, General Chairs.