Streamlining Social Decision Making for Improved Internet Standards
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Glasgow
Department Name: School of Computing Science
Abstract
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Organisations
Publications
Arkko J
(2021)
Report from the IAB COVID-19 Network Impacts Workshop 2020
Barnes M
(2024)
Temporal Network Analysis of Email Communication Patterns in a Long Standing Hierarchy
in Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
Cavoj S
(2024)
Session Types for the Transport Layer: Towards an Implementation of TCP
in Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science
Healey PGT
(2023)
Power and vulnerability: managing sensitive language in organizational communication.
in Frontiers in psychology
Karan M.
(2023)
LEDA: a Large-Organization Email-Based Decision-Dialogue-Act Analysis Dataset
in Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics
Khare P
(2022)
The Web We Weave: Untangling the Social Graph of the IETF
in Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
Khare P.
(2023)
Tracing Linguistic Markers of Influence in a Large Online Organisation
in Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics
| Description | Findings highlight that Internet standards are becoming more complex over time, and taking longer to publish, and that this is due to the increasing complexity of the problem domains rather than inherent flaws in the standards development process. They show that academics can have a significant impact on the development of the Internet, and that although there is a dominant clique developing Internet standards, it is possible for newcomers to have an impact, and that the process is gradually becoming more open and inclusive over time. Analysis identified some factors that lead to success in developing Internet standards, although it is clear that further study is needed given the complexity of this domain. |
| Exploitation Route | We have ongoing work with the Internet Engineering Task Force, the key standards development organisation relating to the Internet, to explore how to improve their standards development process, diversity of participation. This includes the Research and Analysis of Standards Processes Research Group, formally chartered early in 2023 by Perkins, as IRTF chair, and with strong participation by project members (McQuistin, Yanagida in Glasgow, Castro as RG Chair at QMUL), that was formed to provide an ongoing home for debate and discussion on this topic, and a forum to connect academic researchers with professional practitioners and industry working on Internet standards. |
| Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) |
| Description | In conjunction with the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the oversight body for the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the premier standards development organisation for technical standards relating to the Internet, we organised a workshop to explore how organisational data about the IETF could be used to understand and improve the standards development process. The IAB, and the Internet Engineering Steering Group that oversees day-to-day standards development, are using our results, and those of other related activities, to try to improve the diversity and inclusivity of the process. Within the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), the research arm of the IETF, we formed the Research and Analysis of Standards Processes Research Group, to coordinate an international programme of study in how Internet standards are developed. Results from the project were presented to the IETF standards community, at numerous industry and professional forums, and discussed at the UN Internet Governance Forum in Kyoto in 2023. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2021 |
| Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) |
| Impact Types | Economic |
| Description | IAB Response to the NIST RFI on USG NSSCET |
| Geographic Reach | North America |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| URL | https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/statement-iab-response-to-the-nist-rfi-on-usg-nsscet/ |
| Description | Internet Futures: Spotlight on the technologies which may shape the Internet of the future |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| URL | https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/internet-and-on-demand-research/internet-futures |
| Description | Study on UK Digital Standards Participation |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| Title | A Dataset for Expert Reviewer Recommendation with Large Language Models as Zero-shot Rankers |
| Description | The task of reviewer recommendation is increasingly important, with main techniques utilizing general models of text relevance. However, state of the art (SotA) systems still have relatively high error rates. Two possible reasons for this are: a lack of large datasets and the fact that large language models (LLMs) have not yet been applied. To fill these gaps, we first create a substantial new dataset, in the domain of Internet specification documents; then we introduce the use of LLMs and evaluate their performance. We find that LLMs with prompting can improve on SotA in some cases, but that they are not a cure-all: this task provides a challenging setting for prompt-based methods |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2025 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The first large dataset of annotated reviewer recommendations, for training automated classification model, derived from Internet standards documents; annotated based on project outcomes. |
| URL | https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.756/ |
| Title | A First Look at the Privacy Harms of the Public Suffix List (dataset & code) |
| Description | Dataset and code to support the publication "A First Look at the Privacy Harms of the Public Suffix List". |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Results, data, and supporting code to support the publication "A First Look at the Privacy Harms of the Public Suffix List". |
| URL | https://research-portal.st-andrews.ac.uk/en/datasets/a-first-look-at-the-privacy-harms-of-the-public... |
| Title | Characterising the IETF Through the Lens of RFC Deployment |
| Description | Supporting code and data for Stephen McQuistin, Mladen Karan, Prashant Khare, Colin Perkins, Gareth Tyson, Matthew Purver, Patrick Healey, Waleed Iqbal, Junaid Qadir, Ignacio Castro, Characterising the IETF Through the Lens of RFC Deployment, Proceedings of the ACM Internet Measurement Conference, November 2021. DOI:10.1145/3487552.3487821 |
| Type Of Material | Computer model/algorithm |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Supporting code and data for Stephen McQuistin, Mladen Karan, Prashant Khare, Colin Perkins, Gareth Tyson, Matthew Purver, Patrick Healey, Waleed Iqbal, Junaid Qadir, Ignacio Castro, Characterising the IETF Through the Lens of RFC Deployment, Proceedings of the ACM Internet Measurement Conference, November 2021. DOI:10.1145/3487552.3487821 |
| URL | https://researchdata.gla.ac.uk/1187/ |
| Title | IETF Datatracker Data Access Tool |
| Description | Data access software, developed by project EP/R04144X/1, used to support development of paper published in the ACM Internet Measurement Conference 2021 (DOI: 10.1145/3487552.3487821) under funding form project EP/S036075/1. |
| Type Of Material | Computer model/algorithm |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | This software tool supports ongoing research to improve the quality of IETF standards and to understand the diversity, inclusion, and development of the standards process. This particular release supported work published in the ACM Internet Measurement Conference 2021. Other versions have been used to support the Internet Architecture Board workshop on Analysis of IETF Data (https://www.iab.org/activities/workshops/aid/), the BigBang Project (http://datactive.github.io/bigbang/), and our follow-on work in EPSRC project EP/S036075/1. |
| URL | https://github.com/glasgow-ipl/ietfdata |
| Title | LEDA: a Large-Organization Email-Based Decision-Dialogue-Act Analysis Dataset |
| Description | Collaboration increasingly happens online. This is especially true for large groups working on global tasks, with collaborators all around the globe. The size and distributed nature of such groups makes decision-making challenging. This paper proposes a set of dialog acts for the study of decision-making mechanisms in such groups, and provides a new annotated dataset based on real-world data from the public mail-archives of one such organisation - the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). We provide an initial data analysis showing that this dataset can be used to better understand decision-making in such organisations. Finally, we experiment with a preliminary transformer-based dialog act tagging model. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The dataset is intended to support work on natural language processes to understand decision making in large online organisations, as an alternative to the widely used Enron dataset. It provides tooling to extract, tidy, and prepare data from the Internet Engineering Task Force mail archive, representing a key record of the development of internet technical standards. |
| Title | Code to support "Errare humanum est: What do RFC Errata say about Internet Standards?" |
| Description | Code to support "Errare humanum est: What do RFC Errata say about Internet Standards?", published in the proceedings of the 7th Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis Conference (TMA 2023) --https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/298487/ |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | Protocol standards, such as RFCs developed by the IETF, are crucial for the correct operation of the Internet, but many are published containing errors. The RFC Editor allows people to report errata, allowing anybody to flag such errors for subsequent correction. This represents an important part of the RFC publication process, and may reveal ways in which standards can be improved. This paper performs the first study of RFC errata reports. We characterize and perform a statistical analysis of the scale and nature of these errata and explore who submits them. Finally, we evaluate the impact, in terms of the number of errata filings, of three different strategies that are designed to improve the standards process. We find that specialist review teams and formal language checkers can reduce the volume of errata filed against standards documents. |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/8008031 |
| Title | Code to support "Errare humanum est: What do RFC Errata say about Internet Standards?" |
| Description | Code to support "Errare humanum est: What do RFC Errata say about Internet Standards?", published in the proceedings of the 7th Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis Conference (TMA 2023) --https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/298487/ |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | Discussed with RFC Editor and IETF standards community, as input to the ongoing revision of the errata system. |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/8008032 |
| Title | ietfdata library |
| Description | This software library contains Python 3 libraries to interact with, and access, the (IETF data tracker)[https://datatracker.ietf.org], (RFC index)[https://www.rfc-editor.org], and related resources. This support data collection for the project, and for related projects. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | This software library supports the goals of the research project and other related projects. In particular, it has been incorporated into the BigBang tool for scientific analysis of Internet standards development and Internet governance communities, developed by Sebastian Benthall (NYU School of Law), Nick Doty (UC Berkeley), and Niels ten Oever (University of Amsterdam). The BigBang tool is the basis for several publications, and has been discussed at IETF and IRTF Internet standards/research meetings. |
| URL | https://github.com/glasgow-ipl/ietfdata |
| Description | An Empirical Analysis of the Internet Engineering Task Force with Computational Methods |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Perkins presented a summary of the key results of the project, outlined the tools and data available, and sought collaboration with the participants at the Empirical Research Conference on Standards, held at the Pritzker Law School in Chicago in October 2024. This provided an opportunity to engage with different communities, legal and business, including academics and professional practitioners, that work with data relating to Internet standards, to showcase the tools developed in the project and key results, and to build collaboration. Led to some ongoing discussions and a presentation by one of the other participants in a relevant standards meeting. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.law.northwestern.edu/research-faculty/clbe/events/standardization/ |
| Description | Connecting Internet protocols and standards with policy (Article 19/CDT at IETF 115) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Participated in panel discussion at a "Connecting Internet protocols and standards with policy" event organised by Article 19 and the Centre for Democracy and Technology, held co-located with the 115th Internet Engineering Task Force Meeting. Audience was civil society organisations, seeking advice on how to engage with the Internet standards development process. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.eventbrite.com/e/connecting-internet-protocols-and-standards-with-policy-tickets-4308107... |
| Description | DCMS/Internet Society Policymaker Engagement Programme at IETF 115 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Presentation and panel discussion as part of the policymaker programme organised by the Internet Society and the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport, training policymakers on the Internet's design and operations, to allow them to participate effectively in the Internet standards process. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.internetsociety.org/policy-programs/policymakers-program-to-ietf/ |
| Description | Decoding the IETF |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Invited talk to blockchain infrastructure research and engineering company discussing approaches to Internet governance as input to development of their governance/standards model. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Digital Standards: Upholding integrity, accelerating innovation |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Invited to attend UK Digital Standards Showcase "Upholding integrity, accelerating innovation" organised by UK Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology on 19 February 2024. Engaged in dialogue with other participants from UK government, national and international industry, around Internet governance, standards development. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/uk-approach-to-digital-standards-upholding-integrity-accelera... |
| Description | HotRFC talk at IETF 112 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Recorded a short lightning presentation and attended a virtual Q&A session. The HotRFC session at the IETF is intended to provide a venue for new IETF or IRTF related work, the goals of encouraging conversation and collaboration, and raising awareness of relevant work. We presented our IMC 2021 paper ("Characterising the IETF Through the Lens of RFC Deployment"). This led to discussion about avenues for future work, including additional data about the IETF that we could analyse. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/112/materials/agenda-112-hotrfc-sessa-20 |
| Description | IETF 110 Hackathon |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Participated in the IETF 110 hackathon. This is a collaborative software development event, intended to foster collaboration and to develop utilities, ideas, sample code and solutions that show practical implementations of IETF standards and related technologies. The focus of our engagement was to enhance collaboration with the BigBang project for analysis of standards development and internet governance, a closely related project to our work at UC Berkely, NYU Law School, and the University of Amsterdam, by integrating the two toolsets, as a prelude to future collaboration. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.ietf.org/how/runningcode/hackathons/110-hackathon/ |
| Description | IETF 113 Hackathon |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Led a project at the IETF 113 hackathon. Co-located with IETF 113 in Vienna, the hackathon aims to provide a venue for collaboration between developers and standards authors, with a view to produce running code and practical implementations. Our participation was a co-creation activity, aimed at engaging with the IETF community to ensure that our tools development and data analysis was focused on issue of importance within that community. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://trac.ietf.org/trac/ietf/meeting/wiki/113hackathon |
| Description | IETF 115 Hackathon |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Championed a project at the IETF 115 Hackathon. This event, co-located with the IETF 115 meeting in London, brought together standards authors, developers, and the wider community, with the aim of developing practical implementations of IETF standards. Our participation at the Hackathon was largely as a co-creation activity, where we shared our ongoing results and tools development with the community, and received feedback that was useful in shaping future work. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://wiki.ietf.org/en/meeting/115/hackathon |
| Description | IETF 115: Research and Analysis of Standards Processes Research Group |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Meeting at the 115th Internet Engineering Task Force to gauge interest in, and plan creation of, a Research and Analysis of Standards Processes Research Group. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | IETF 116 Policymakers Programme |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Invited speaker at the Internet Society's Policy Makers Programme, training policy advisers and regulators from Asia-Pacific region on how to engage with Internet standards development organisations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.internetsociety.org/policy-programs/policymakers-program-to-ietf/ |
| Description | IETF 117 Policymakers Programme |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Invited speaker at the Internet Society's Policy Makers Programme, training policy advisers and regulators from North America on how to engage with Internet standards development organisations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.internetsociety.org/policy-programs/policymakers-program-to-ietf/ |
| Description | IETF 118 Policymakers Programme |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Invited speaker at the Internet Society's Policy Makers Programme, training policy advisers from The Netherlands, the Czech Republic, New Zealand, the UK, and Germany, on how to engage with Internet standards development organisations |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.internetsociety.org/policy-programs/policymakers-program-to-ietf/ |
| Description | IETF 119 Policymakers Programme |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Invited speaker at the Internet Society's Policy Makers Programme at IETF 119 in Brisbane, Australia, training policy advisers from Australia, New Zealand, Samoa, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, on how to engage with Internet standards development organisations. March 2024 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.internetsociety.org/policy-programs/policymakers-program-to-ietf/ |
| Description | IETF 120 Policymakers Programme |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Invited speaker at the Internet Society's Policy Makers Programme at IETF 120 in Vancouver, Canada, training policy advisers from Canada, Costa Rica, India, New Zealand, Panama, Peru, UK, and the USA, on how to engage with Internet standards development organisations. July 2024 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.internetsociety.org/policy-programs/policymakers-program-to-ietf/ |
| Description | IETF 121 Policymakers Programme |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Invited speaker at the Internet Society's Policy Makers Programme at IETF 121 in Dublin, Ireland, training policy advisers from ECOWAS, Tanzania, Cabo Verde, Ethiopia, South Africa, Malawi, New Zealand, UK, and Ireland, on how to engage with Internet standards development organisations. November 2024. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.internetsociety.org/policy-programs/policymakers-program-to-ietf/ |
| Description | IRTF Research and Analysis of Standard-Setting Processes Proposed Research Group at IETF 116 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Chartered the IRTF Research and Analysis of Standard-Setting Processes Proposed Research Group to bring together researchers, practitioners, policy makers, standards users, and standards developers to study standardisation processes across SDOs, with a particular focus on Internet standard-setting in the IETF. The research is aimed at informing the comprehension of standardisation processes and policies, and possibly providing tools and insights. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://datatracker.ietf.org/rg/rasprg/about/ |
| Description | IRTF Research and Analysis of Standard-Setting Processes Proposed Research Group at IETF 118 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The IRTF Research and Analysis of Standard-Setting Processes Proposed Research Group brings together researchers, practitioners, policy makers, standards users, and standards developers to study standardisation processes across SDOs, with a particular focus on Internet standard-setting in the IETF. The research is aimed at informing the comprehension of standardisation processes and policies, and possibly providing tools and insights. As IRTF Chair, Perkins manages the operation of the group, and also contributed to the technical discussion. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://datatracker.ietf.org/rg/rasprg/about/ |
| Description | IRTF Research and Analysis of Standard-Setting Processes Proposed Research Group at IETF 119 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The IRTF Research and Analysis of Standard-Setting Processes Proposed Research Group brings together researchers, practitioners, policy makers, standards users, and standards developers to study standardisation processes across SDOs, with a particular focus on Internet standard-setting in the IETF. The research is aimed at informing the comprehension of standardisation processes and policies, and possibly providing tools and insights. As IRTF Chair, Perkins oversees and supports the operation of the group, and also contributed to the technical discussion. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/119/session/rasprg |
| Description | IRTF Research and Analysis of Standard-Setting Processes Proposed Research Group at IETF 120 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The IRTF Research and Analysis of Standard-Setting Processes Proposed Research Group brings together researchers, practitioners, policy makers, standards users, and standards developers to study standardisation processes across SDOs, with a particular focus on Internet standard-setting in the IETF. The research is aimed at informing the comprehension of standardisation processes and policies, and possibly providing tools and insights. As IRTF Chair, Perkins oversees and supports the operation of the group, and also contributed to the technical discussion. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/120/session/rasprg |
| Description | IRTF Research and Analysis of Standard-Setting Processes Proposed Research Group at IETF 121 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The IRTF Research and Analysis of Standard-Setting Processes Proposed Research Group brings together researchers, practitioners, policy makers, standards users, and standards developers to study standardisation processes across SDOs, with a particular focus on Internet standard-setting in the IETF. The research is aimed at informing the comprehension of standardisation processes and policies, and possibly providing tools and insights. As IRTF Chair, Perkins oversees and supports the operation of the group, and also contributed to the technical discussion. Ryo Yanagida, gave a talk "Exploring the Standards Development Process through analysing open data" that introduced the tools we have developed in the project. Ryo showcased examples from the published results of the project, directly engaging standards developers with the results of our analysis of the standards development process, and described how the tooling we have produced and made open source can be used to understand the development process. He concluded with a call for future collaboration to better understand the development of standards, connecting researchers with industry standards developer. Justus Baron, from Northwestern School of Law, presented results of a study of standardisation he has undertaken, leading to a lively discussion. This was the result of discussion leading from Perkins' presentation at the Empirical Research Conference on Standardisation, earlier in the year. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/121/session/rasprg |
| Description | Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Town Hall - Interoperability and the multistakeholder model |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Co-organised and participated in a Town Hall meeting at the United National Internet Governance Forum meeting in Kyoto, Japan, in October 2023, with others from the Internet Engineering Task Force and Internet Architecture Board leadership. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) hosted a Town Hall meeting at the UN IGF 2023. The IETF is the premier Standards Development Organization for Internet protocols. Its mission is to make the Internet work better by producing high quality, relevant, technical standards and engineering documents that influence the way people design, use, and manage the Internet. The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) of the IETF provides architectural oversight for Internet protocol development and standardization. The Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) is a parallel organization to the IETF with a focus on longer-term research related to the Internet. This Session will allow a significant opportunity for delegates to pose questions to the IETF, IAB, and IRTF leadership, and key community members. The main focus was on understanding the process by which the IETF develops technical standards relating to the Internet, their relationship to partner organizations such as ICANN, IANA, the RIRs, IEEE, W3C, the Internet Society and others, and the role of the IETF in Internet governance. The Town Hall also addressed the role of the technical standards developed by IETF in providing an interoperable basis for development, and thereby relates to the role of standards and interoperability in avoiding fragmentation of the Internet infrastructure. The IETF is part of, and through its processes fosters, the multistakeholder nature of Internet governance. The IETF and IRTF are open for participation by all, with no individual or organizational membership. The IETF operates by consensus and its standards development is fully transparent and openly documented. These principles provide the basis for the participation by a broad set of stakeholders to enable input and consideration of all perspectives in the standards-setting process. Speakers included: Mirja Kuehlewind, IAB Chair, Ericsson; Lars Eggert, IETF Chair, NetApp; Colin Perkins, IRTF Chair, University of Glasgow; Dhruv Dhody, Huawei; Andew Alston, Liquid; Jane Coffin, Connect Humanity; Mallory Knodel, Centre for Democracy and Technology. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.intgovforum.org/en/content/igf-2023-town-hall-32-internet-engineering-task-force-open-fo... |
| Description | JPNIC article reporting NGN protocol activities at IETF118 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Ryo Yanagida wrote an article for JPNIC, the Japanese Internet operators forum, summarising key activities at the IETF 118 Meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, that he attended as part of his project activities to understand, and engage with, the Internet standards process. This helps inform the broader community of ongoing technical standards development activities, raising the profile of the project that is exploring the effectiveness of that standards development process. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://blog.nic.ad.jp/2024/9611/ |
| Description | Meeting with FCDO Development and Open Societies Directorate |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Colin Perkins met with the Development and Open Societies Directorate at the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office, along with Andrew Sullivan, CEO, Internet Society and Mirja Kuehlewind, Chair, Internet Architecture Board, in his role as Chair of the Internet Research Task Force, to discuss technical issues around measuring Internet shutdowns, the economic and social impact of this, and potential strategies for improving robustness of the infrastructure. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | Meeting with Ofcom re implementation of the Online Safety Act |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Colin Perkins visited Ofcom with Andrew Sullivan, CEO, Internet Society and Mirja Kuehlewind, Chair, Internet Architecture Board, in his role as Chair of the Internet Research Task Force, to discuss implementation of the Online Safety Act and provide input from the Internet standards community on technical feasibility of client-side scanning technologies. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | Nominet's "Defending the Free and Open Internet" roundtable |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Roundtable on "Defending the Free and Open Internet", organised by Nominet, focusing on bolstering good internet governance when faced with hostile state and non-state actors. Held at the House of Commons in November 2022, with participation by industry experts, policymakers, and MPs, |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Organise and co-chair IAB AID Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Organised and co-chaired the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) workshop on Analysing IETF Data. The IAB Workshop on Analysing IETF Data (AID) brought together standards developers and researchers to explore trends in IETF data (including mail archives, documents, and metadata). The event was spread over four days, with short lightning-style presentations on the first and fourth days, and a hackathon on the second and third days. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.iab.org/activities/workshops/aid/ |
| Description | Participation in the IAB AID workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presented both the tooling that we have developed, and the key results from our recent IMC 2021 paper ("Characterising the IETF through the lens of RFC deployment"). The IAB Workshop on Analysing IETF Data (AID) brought together standards developers and researchers to explore trends in IETF data (including mail archives, documents, and metadata). The event was spread over four days, with short lightning-style presentations on the first and fourth days, and a hackathon on the second and third days. Our participation in the event led us to identify future research questions, and potential collaborators. Additionally, it helped us to demonstrate the tooling that we have developed to help others with their research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.iab.org/activities/workshops/aid/ |
| Description | Research and Collaboration Opportunities with the IETF |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Perkins have an online seminar to members of the Latin America and Caribbean Network Information Centre in February 2025. The audience comprised researchers, network operators, and industry participants engaged in Internet-related research and operations. The talk focussed on encouraging participation from the Latin American region in Internet standards, describing the process of how to effectively engage, showing examples of prior success from the region, and highlighting the support available. Built on experiences as IRTF Chair and data and results from the project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
| Description | Rough Consensus and Running Code: IETF, IRTF, and why you should care |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Gave a talk to the UK Network Users Group meeting in Edinburgh in April 2024. The audience was network operators and vendors from industry in Scotland and the broader UK. I discussed the importance of the Internet standards process, why and how the audience should engage, and presented some results from the project to show that engagement may have benefit. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | Scottish Autonomous Networked Systems 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Perkins and Yanagida gave talks at the Scottish Autonomous Networked Systems event 2022, on the topics "Should the Internet Adopt Named Data and Services?" and "Supporting Autonomous Networking with Content Centric Networking", discussing how to improve Internet protocol standards, building on experiences and results from the project around what make a successful standard. The audience was primarily academics, but there were some industry participants and professional practitioners. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://scot-ans.github.io |
| Description | Scottish Autonomous Networked Systems 2024 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Perkins and Yanagida gave talks at the Scottish Autonomous Networked Systems event 2024, on the topics "Autonomous networks need standards" and "QoS In Information Centric Networks", discussing how to improve Internet protocol standards. The audience was primarily academics, but there were some industry participants and professional practitioners. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://scot-ans.github.io |
| Description | Seminar Talk (Multi-Service Networks workshop) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Gave a talk, entitled "Making the Internet: A longitudinal analysis of the IETF", at the Multi-Service Networks workshop (MSN 2022) in July 2022. This talk described some of the key findings of the project to date, along with an overview of its broader goals and next steps. The audience was primarily comprised of academics, but also included participants from industry. The goal was to give visibility to the project and, in particular, the datasets that we have gathered, to encourage collaboration with other members of the community. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://coseners.net/history/previous/coseners-2022/ |
| Description | Seminar Talk (Scottish Networking Event) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Gave a talk, entitled "Can we Improve Internet Protocol Standards?", at the Scottish Networking Event in March 2020, describing the goals of the project and outcomes to date. The audience was primarily other academics, but with some Scottish SMEs present. The goal was to raise awareness of the project, and the techniques we are promoting to improve the standards development process, to members of the research community who engage in technology transfer and Internet standards development. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Seminar Talk (Scottish Networking Event) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Gave a talk, entitled "Making the Internet: A longitudinal analysis of the IETF", at the Scottish Networking Event held at the University of Edinburgh in February 2023. The audience was largely comprised of academics and PhD students from Scottish universities. The goal was to increase the visibility of the project, and to identify possible collaborations with other academics in the community. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://scone.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/meetings/scone-meeting-10-02-2023/ |
| Description | The Internet Way of Networking: Lessons from Standards and a Pandemic |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Invited talk and participation in UKRI PETRAS Future of the Internet Workshop |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |