IETF87 Jari Arkko

Dan York: I'm here with Jari Arkko, the chair of
the Internet Engineering Task Force

and we're finishing up the 87th meeting of the IETF here in Berlin, Germany

What are some of the areas of work this
week you found most interesting?

Jari Arkko: Well, I found most interesting piece of
work to be

the new proposals, we had exceptionally
many suggestions for new working groups

this time: 12.

Some of those were in the area
of home networking,

Internet of things, and better queue
management for routers

-- without increasing the speed

of your links to the Internet, make the Internet quality better, make your browser work faster

Dan: Can you give us a sense--

it seems like a lot of people were here. Can
you give a sense of how many people

are what countries, what kind geographic coverage there was?

Jari: This is a record meeting in many ways. We have for over 1400 people here

which is more than we've had in many, many
years.

But perhaps more importantly we had 62
countries

when I checked yesterday and maybe a few more today,

which is a huge number of people from different places.

It is important to understand how the Internet works in different places.

and what requirements people have, so that's really great.

And, over three hundred newcomers--that's also amazing.

So we have lots of new people coming to the IETF.

Dan: That's great. How how do we channel that energy of all those

newcomers and those people coming in
there? I know you can involved with mentoring.

You've helped start up some initiatives of things.

Can you talk a bit about some of that?

Jari: Right, so it is indeed a challenge

to get new people set up for work at the IETF,

to make sure they have the connections,

and they find ways to do productive work here.

For these reasons may be trying to make
sure that we can welcome

all kinds of people from all areas of the world.

And we have our mentoring programs

to team up newcomers with people have
been here longer and

seems to be working pretty well so I'm
really happy about this.

It is an IETF community effort

so lots of people volunteered to do this.

Dan: I've heard some great comments this week
from people who are new mentors

and just talk about how it's enriched
their experience here.

Now you also involved with setting up a
diversity task force, or design team.

What's involved with that?

Jari: Well, the main goal that we

really can use all the experiences all
of people

that want to have an effect on the Internet--

from different areas of the world,

different types of organizations,
like vendors,

or operators, or academia.

And we're trying to make that

as easy as possible for everyone

so that we can grow on those experiences. The IETF can say we understand

what the needs for the Internet are,
requirements for the Internet, and the problems

people are facing today.

That's the main goal.

Only then we can actually work

in the most efficient manner to build the new
Internet technologies that everyone needs.

Dan: Speaking of that,

have there been new areas--you mentioned the BoFs at the beginning--

some of the new areas that have been,

or the new areas that the IETF needs to
go into,

that you're seeing coming out the work
here?

Jari: Well, some other things that
I personally am

following quite a bit. One is putting
multimedia technology in the browsers.

Another one is enabling the Internet of things

to put IP technology in objects around us

and the role of the IETF is not
to design those applications per se

but create a platform where others-the
vendors and innovators

and individual users can
build on these technologies

to do all the great things that we've
known them to do

for this is the Internet so
far and just

up I'm very happy about what's
going on.

It seems like we're getting these platforms
in place,

and the sky is the limit for the
innovations to come on top of those.

Dan: Now this is your first time as IETF Chair.

In full environment here. How's it been?

Jari: Certainly I have far less time to do
the technical work.

So that's one aspect of it.

It's also good for me to see
how much energy people have

around the organization,

how the newcomers are coming in.
It's been a lot of fun actually.

Dan: Speaking of those newcomers:

if you could say one thing the people
there about why they should be involved

with the IETF, what would you say?

Why would you encourage people to get involved?

Jari: Well we could talk about the different
technical topics,

but I think that's beside the point.

For me, and I hope for most of the people here,

the real answer is that people at the IETF.
So if you come here, you'll meet

lots of people who are
building the real components

for routers and

computers that do this "Internet thing".

and having an opportunity to talk to those people

and come up with new extensions, or new ideas.

That's really exciting.

It's also business opportunity because

that means we can find others who have an ability to effect what kind of things

are running on the Internet.

And then, together, we can actually make new things.

happen as opposed to attempting to do it alone.

So it's the people, the connections

that's most interesting.

Dan: A final question. Looking ahead for
this next while,

where do you see the IETF
going over this next bit?

Where do you see the work that's happening here moving?

Jari: I think its mostly in the areas of multimedia communications,

the Internet of things.

Of course,

we need to take care of the network backbone as well.

We have out routing systems, and

everything else of working as efficiently as possible.

Dan: Well thank you for your time Jari.
I wish you the best with the rest of the week here.

Jari: My pleasure.