Minutes of the 2011-12-07 IAB Teleconference (Techchat and Business Meeting)

1. Roll-call, agenda-bash, administrivia

1.1. Attendance

PRESENT

• Bernard Aboba (IAB Chair)
• Ross Callon
• Alissa Cooper
• Spencer Dawkins
• Mat Ford (ISOC Liaison)
• Joel Halpern
• David Kessens
• Olaf Kolkman
• Danny McPherson
• Cindy Morgan (IAB Executive Assistant)
• Andrei Robachevsky
• Dow Street (IAB Executive Director)
• Dave Thaler
• Hannes Tschofenig
• Sean Turner (IESG Liaison)

APOLOGIES

• Lars Eggert (IRTF Chair)
• Russ Housley (IETF Chair)
• Jon Peterson

GUESTS

• Eliot Lear (present for item 3 only)
• Henning Schulzrinne (present through item 2 only)

1.2. Agenda

No agenda items were added.

1.3. Administrivia

No administrative issues were discussed.

2. Techchat: Technology & Regulation

Henning Schulzrinne provided the board with an overview on technology and regulation, noting that he could not comment on any current active rule-making and that any opinions expressed during his presentation were his own.

Regulation tends to emerge for four reasons:

• Market failure
• Law enforcement
• Consumer education
• Economic development

In a mixed economy, there is a tussle between competition and regulation; even when goals such as innovation and customer satisfaction are agreed upon, there may be disagreement about the means of achieving those goals. There is also the concept of universal services, where certain communications systems are considered vital functions. For example, in the case of a major disaster, regulations exist to ensure that function is restored in a timely manner after an outage.

In the United States, there are typically three layers of regulation: local, state and federal. In the U.S., regulations are based on the Communications Act of 1934, which was last updated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This can become an issue when regulations cannot keep up with the pace of new technology.

The process for creating new regulations starts with a Notice of Inquiry (NOI), which outlines the issues. This is followed by a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM), and finally a Report and Order, which summarizes and makes the rules. The full process is outlined in the Administrative Procedure Act.

Individual citizens, companies or other organizations may provide input into rule-making by providing reasonable, clear comments and feedback on the NOI and NPRMs. The feedback may be technical; it is reviewed by people with technical understanding.

Henning listed a number of IETF working groups whose work may relate to current regulations, including ECRIT, GEOPRIV, ATOCA, PAWS, DNSEXT, MIF, MPLS and IPPM.

3. ITU-T Coordination

3.1. ITU-T Coordination Program January Meeting

Eliot briefly presented the draft agenda for the ITU-T Coordination Program’s meeting in January. The meeting will focus on reviewing key strategic issues and clarifying roles and responsibilities within the team.

3.2. SG-15 Report

Eliot reported that Scott Mansfield is leading the IETF delegation to the Study Group 15 meeting currently being held in Geneva. The SG15 agenda includes discussing the approval of G.8113.1 and G.8113.2; a decision is not expected until the very end of the meeting (scheduled to end 15 December 2011). The IETF delegation position is to encourage safe and proper standards development through the use of IETF processes that must be followed for codepoint allocations.