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New IETF Area focuses on web and transport technologies
- Zaheduzzaman Sarker WIT Area Director
- Francesca Palombini WIT Area Director
8 Oct 2024
The new Web and Internet Transport (WIT) area covers protocols that provide the functions of the transport layer of the Internet, including congestion control and queue management, real-time communication, as well as protocols that implement the World Wide Web and adjacent technologies.
Recognizing the increasing activity in application and real-time technologies and a shift in the technical work underway in the IETF, during 2023 the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) reviewed how best to organize Working Groups (WGs) into Areas. The result was the creation of the WIT Area, which began work with the IETF 119 Brisbane meeting held in March 2024. WIT took over from the Transport (TSV) Area and incorporated the web-related and real-time part of Application and Real-Time (ART) Area. One of the aims of this new area was to have cohesion around traditional Transport subjects and ART protocols that are often used as transports, especially HTTP.
Areas help connect IETF work on related technologies. They are managed by Area Directors (ADs) who are jointly responsible for making sure the WGs in the area are well coordinated, that there is coverage for the technologies needed in the area, and that the challenges most important to the Internet in that area are indeed being worked on.
The WIT Area, with its two centers of gravity (transport layer and web applications), includes groups that work on technologies such as QUIC, TCP, UDP, SCTP, RTP, and MASQUE, and also groups working on technologies like HTTP, CoAP, and MOQ.
If you would like to learn more about work underway in the WIT area, many of the Working Groups will be meeting during the upcoming IETF 121 Dublin meeting. There will be meetings such as the TSV working group (TSVWG), QUIC, MOQ, HTTPbis, CoRE, WEBTRANS, and AVTCORE. Birds of a Feather (BOF) sessions are good places to start if you are looking to learn more about work being considered, and the High Performance Wide Area Network (HPWAN) BoF will be held during IETF 121.
For any group you are interested in, be sure to join the mailing lists and review documents so you can be up to speed on discussions that will take place during IETF 121. The WITAREA mailing list archive includes summary Working Group reports from previous meetings, which give a high-level overview to the status of most WIT working groups. If you’d like, you can reach us on the main WIT Area mailing list or directly at wit-ads@ietf.org.