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PLENARY

Summary

The Plenary session at IETF 120 in Vienna, Austria, featured updates from the IETF, IAB, IRTF, NomCom, IETF Trust, and IETF LLC leadership. Key administrative milestones included the publication of RFC 9945 (establishing the new moderation process), the transition of IETF assets to the IETF Intellectual Property Management Corporation (IPMC), and the insourcing/restructuring of the IETF Secretariat.

The community open mic sessions focused heavily on the operational and cultural impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the standards process, the governance and prioritization of "side meetings," ongoing leadership diversity challenges, and venue selection criteria in a politically complex global landscape.

Key Discussion Points

Host & Sponsorship Recognition

• Global Host: Cisco, represented by Cullen 'Fluffy' Jennings, was thanked for hosting and presented with a plaque.
• Gold Sponsors (Diversity & Inclusion): Akamai, Huawei.
• Sponsors: Comcast, ICANN, DENIC, Nominet, ZTE.
• Connectivity & Local Supporter: NextLayer.

Leadership Reports

• IETF Chair & IESG Report (Roman Danyliw):

  • Attendance: Approximately 1,900 registered attendees, the highest onsite participation since December 2000 (San Diego). Over 750 participants registered for the Hackathon. Approximately 20% are first-time attendees.
  • Community Survey: Highlights from the IETF 2025 Community Survey indicate a total reach of ~52,000 subscribed email addresses with ~7,000 active yearly participants. Roughly half of the active community participates solely through mailing lists or interim meetings without attending the in-person plenaries.
  • Appeals: Six new appeals were filed since IETF 119 (five related to the TLS Working Group, one related to the IRTF).
  • Process & Moderation: RFC 9945 was published, establishing a new moderation framework. A new Moderation Team has been appointed: Chris Box, Martin Thomson, Bron Gondwana, Susan Hares, Murray Kucherawy, and Mohit Toor. The team will define the operational procedures for approval by the IESG, and the mod-discuss mailing list (formerly ModPod) is designated as the community discussion forum.
  • Ombuds Team: Sofia Selle completed her three-year term. Padma Venkatesh was welcomed as the incoming Ombuds team member.

• IAB Report (Dhruv Dhody):

  • Workshop reports for three recent workshops have been published; the report for the December workshop is in queue.
  • A new liaison relationship was established with the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF).
  • Active outreach was conducted at RIPE, LACNIC, and NANOG, with upcoming plans for APNIC.

• IRTF Report (Colin Perkins):

  • 14 of the 16 active Research Groups met during IETF 120.
  • The Sustain and Space Physics Proposed Research Groups were officially promoted to active Research Groups.
  • The Applied Networking Research Workshop (ANRW), co-chaired by Thomas Schmidt and Suresh Krishnan, took place on Monday.
  • The Applied Networking Research Prize (ANRP) was awarded to Ramayza Habib (formalizing dependence on web infrastructure) and a second winner (fingerprinting deep packet inspection).

• NomCom Reports:

  • 2023–2024 NomCom (Benno Overeinder): Resolved a mid-term LLC Board vacancy. The selected candidate has been sent to the IESG for confirmation.
  • 2024–2025 NomCom (Mankamna Mishra): 14 open positions are active for selection (1 IETF Trust, 6 IAB, 7 IESG). Nominations open August 1 and close October 14. Virtual interviews will begin October 20, followed by in-person interviews at IETF 121.

• IETF Trust & IPMC (Wendy Seltzer):

  • The transition of IETF assets to the newly formed IETF Intellectual Property Management Corporation (IPMC) is ongoing. Copyrights, trademarks, and future assets have been transferred. IANA IPR transfers will conclude upon signing novation agreements.
  • Updated Technical Licensing Provisions (TLPs) are being circulated for feedback on tlp-interest@ietf.org.

• IETF LLC Report (Jay Daley & Mirja Kühlewind):

  • Operations: The Secretariat has been insourced and restructured into two specialized groups: the Meetings Team and the Leadership Support Team.
  • Finances: Roman Danyliw assumed the role of Treasurer following a vacancy on the Board. Shwetha Bhandari was thanked for her board service.
  • Consultations: Upcoming community consultations will cover RPC/Tools backlogs and service level agreements (SLAs), the future of the "remote rooms" experiment, and future venue assessments.
  • Venues: Booked future venues include IETF 121 (New Orleans), IETF 122 (Kuala Lumpur), San Francisco, Berlin, and Vancouver.

Open Mic Discussions

AI Inundation and Process Impact

• AI-Generated Content: Concerns were raised by Martin Thomson, Eric Rescorla, and Eric Nygren regarding "AI slop" inflating mailing list traffic and draft submissions. Eric Rescorla emphasized that automated, superficially responsive mailing list messages dilute human review and waste volunteer time. Eric Nygren warned that automated draft generation could lead to the rapid exhaustion of first-come, first-served IANA registry code points.
• AI BoFs: Martin Thomson argued that the AI-centric BoFs held during IETF 120 were scheduled prematurely and lacked maturity. Tommy Pauly and Éric Vyncke countered that holding the BoFs early was a deliberate operational choice to consolidate scattered side-meeting activity and assess community interest in a structured environment.
• Tooling and Norms: Tommy Pauly confirmed that a small group within the IESG is drafting guidance on community expectations for AI usage. Speakers emphasized that authors must remain personally accountable for their submissions, and the IETF must find a mechanism to ensure a real human remains in the loop.

Side Meetings and Resource Contention

• Supply and Demand: Multiple participants (Jim Reid, Andrew Campling, Nathanael Ritz) noted that side meeting rooms were completely booked weeks prior to the meeting, largely by AI-related groups. Jim Reid noted that side meetings are acting as an "unofficial second IETF," displacing space intended for focused, organic WG design-team work.
• Curation and Fees: Andrew Campling suggested light curation to ensure topic diversity. Sean Turner and Martin Duke proposed introducing a sliding or nominal fee for side meetings—particularly those that conflict with official working group sessions—to regulate demand and offset room rental costs. Nathanael Ritz requested improved archiving and transparency for side-meeting slides and notes.

Working Group Conduct & Appeal Handling

• Disruptive Behavior: The community discussed ongoing behavioral friction within the TLS WG. Martin Thomson requested that the IESG equip working group chairs with better tools to defend against "denial-of-service" behavior on mailing lists.
• Appeals Guidance: Rich Salz requested that the IESG actively reject non-conforming appeals containing abusive or non-standard formatting rather than allowing them through with warning footers.
• Balsamic Draft: In chat, Martin Thomson linked to draft-nottnick-ietf-decisions-00 (and his related proposal draft-thomson-balsamic) regarding consensus evaluations and the potential elimination of "SHOULD" keywords.

Diversity and Leadership

• Structural Barriers: Tim Chown highlighted the stark lack of gender diversity in the current leadership slates of the IAB and IESG. Tara Tarakiyee stressed that leadership diversity is a structural issue, not merely a pipeline problem, and urged the community to act boldly to reform NomCom patterns.
• Working Group Co-Chairs: Roman Danyliw detailed the IESG’s ongoing practice of pairing experienced working group chairs with first-time chairs as a practical stepping stone to diversify the leadership pool.

Venues, Safety, and Travel Restrictions

• IETF 121 (New Orleans): Rowan Johns raised concerns regarding safety and operational stability given that IETF 121 occurs shortly after the US Presidential Election. Jay Daley stated that while no specific scenarios are planned for, the LLC relies on its established emergency BCP (RFC 8718 / BCP 226) to manage sudden disruptions.
• IETF 122 (Kuala Lumpur): Jonathan Lennox, Yoav Nir, and Sophie Schmieg expressed significant concern over selecting Malaysia as a host country due to strict visa bans on Israeli passport holders and national laws criminalizing Judaism and LGBT individuals. Jay Daley responded that the geopolitical landscape makes finding a universally acceptable venue impossible. The LLC must distribute travel pain globally, particularly noting that Asian participants routinely face severe visa restrictions when meetings are held in North America or Europe.

Decisions and Action Items

• Moderation Team Appointed: The IESG formally appointed Chris Box, Martin Thomson, Bron Gondwana, Susan Hares, Murray Kucherawy, and Mohit Toor to the new Moderation Team under RFC 9945.
• Board Treasurer: Roman Danyliw was appointed by the LLC Board as the new Treasurer.

Next Steps

• Moderation Team: The newly appointed moderation team will draft operational procedures for implementing RFC 9945 and present them to the IESG and the community via the mod-discuss mailing list.
• LLC Consultations: The IETF LLC will issue community consultations on RPC/Tools SLAs, the remote rooms experiment, and future venue evaluations prior to IETF 121.
• AI Guidance: The IESG group working on AI/LLM norms will continue drafting guidelines regarding AI-generated drafts and mailing list contributions.
• NomCom Nominations: Community members are encouraged to submit nominations or volunteer for open leadership positions when the NomCom period opens on August 1, 2024.

Related Documents

draft-nottnick-ietf-decisions-00, draft-thomson-balsamic