Internet-of-Things Directorate

Charter

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to devices, that are often constrained in communication and computation capabilities, now becoming more commonly connected to the Internet, and various services that are built on top of the capabilities these devices jointly provide. It is expected that this development will usher in more machine-to-machine communication using the Internet with no human user actively involved.

Several working groups, spanning multiple areas within the IETF are developing protocols that are directly relevant to the IoT. In many cases, there is little or no organized coordination between these working groups.

In addition to internal IETF coordination, there is increasing need for communicating with other IoT standard organizations and alliances that are developing solutions. IoT is a very rapidly growing area of technology and connects with number of other emerging technologies. Many organizations outside IETF are not well aware of IoT work at IETF.

The IoT Directorate is an advisory group of experts selected by the Internet Area directors and the Directorate Chairs. The main purpose of the Directorate is coordination within IETF IoT groups and increasing IETF IoT standards visibility to external SDOs, alliances, and other organizations.

The primary tasks performed by the IoT Directorates are:

• Reviewing IoT-relevant documents and other issues when requested by the Internet Area Directors, IETF WG chairs or other area directors for opinions/input on document relevance, or conflicts with other WG work. The Directorate may also point to a subject matter expert or a relevant working group as the home of new work items. For example:
  • Does the issue follow and conform to (or is in the spirit of) existing conventions, whether documented or not?
  • Does the issue warrant "going through" a particular non-IoT Working Group process or is the issue significant enough to justify joint review with a relevant IoT WG?

• Acting as a resource for answering IoT-related questions that working groups encounter in their work on non-IoT protocols. For example:
  • If 6man WG is making changes to Neighbor Discovery, questions may arise as to whether these changes have special impact on 6tisch or 6lowpan networks. The IoT Directorate would, if asked, act as a resource for getting answers to those questions.

• Cross-working group coordination efforts, such as
  • Should a document be reviewed jointly by multiple IoT groups where the work overlaps multiple groups' charters?
  • When a new idea is proposed for work at the IETF, helping to decide whether a research group or a working group should work on the idea, or whether it should not be worked on in the IETF.
  • When an idea being worked on in a research group matures, helping to determine whether it should now be worked on in an IETF working group.
  • Discuss upcoming plug-test events, workshops etc. activities ahead of time in IoT Directorate for conflict avoidance and scheduling

• Being a focal point for external organizations
  • The IAB Liaison Manager and Internet Area ADs should be the first point of contact for external parties to about IETF work. The responsible AD may delegate the responsibilities to IoT Directorate Chairs for further communications
  • The Directorate shall produce basic information about IoT at IETF for external communication
  • The Directorate members are encouraged to speak at relevant IoT external events about IETF work
  • The Directorate communicates with other SDO members to bring them into IETF for presentations and informal communications
  • The IoT Directorate facilitates maintaining an IoT@IETF informational webpage for external communication

When to contact IoT Directorate chairs:

• When unsure whether or not some proposed work belongs in an existing IoT working group, research group, or might motivate the creation of a new IoT group
• When multi-IoT group review is needed
• When non-IETF community requires information about IoT at IETF
• When someone is working on a presentation about IoT work within the IETF and wants some cross-area review of the presentation

Chairs' Role in Cross-area coordination and outreach:

• IoT Directorate chairs may contact relevant Area Directors or WG chairs when a new work or a document needs their attention
• The chairs may be contacted by IoT Directorate members, Internet Area Directors, or other IETF members to arrange informational meetings with other IoT related SDOs. The chairs will facilitate such meetings by coordinating through IoT Directorate members and relevant WGs at the IETF.
• The chairs may also involve the IETF IAB Liaison Manager for outreach of an external SDO.

IoT Directorate will do two different types of reviews:

• Look at a document and see if it appears to have any special considerations relating to IoT technology and operations
• Do a thorough review of a document and provide feedback on the document to whoever requested the review, and to the Area Directors

How the IoT Directorate document review is organized:

• Working group chairs, directorate chairs, and ADs can request a document review at any time using the IETF Datatracker page of a draft. Alternatively review can be requested by contacting Internet ADs or IoT directorate chairs via e-mail.
• To the extent possible, document reviews will be spread across the entire membership of the IoT Directorate
• Exceptions to this policy will be made when a particular IoT Directorate member has special knowledge of the particular topic of the requested review, but the chairs will ensure that the workload on any individual participant is similar to that of other participants

• Whenever a document comes in for review, the chairs will attempt to identify a reviewer using two parallel methods:
  • A request for a volunteer to review the document will go out, with a time limit of three business days
  • A member will be chosen on a round-robin basis, and will be sent a notification that they have been assigned; they should not begin reviewing the document immediately, but should simply indicate whether or not they are able to review this particular document

Reasons to decline review include:

• Not this reviewer's particular IoT area of expertise
• Reviewer is not available

• After three business days, if a volunteer has been identified that volunteer is directed to begin the review
• The IoT Directorate chairs may re-assign the document to another volunteer member if the reviews are not performed by the committed date without any valid reason

• In many cases it may be necessary to ask for help from non-IoT experts; in this case the Directorate chairs will liaise with chairs of other Directorates and Working Groups whose charter covers that area of knowledge.

IoT Directorate membership and participation criteria:

• The pool of potential volunteers includes anyone who is recognized as having significant expertise in IoT work within the IETF and who is willing to do document reviews
• Members may be appointed by IoT Directorate chairs or by INT Area Directors, and may be suggested by chairs of any working group
• Membership is renewable for a two-year term
• Active members are expected to review documents when requested, within reason
• In some cases members may be included who do not have time to fulfil the role of active members in the sense of reviewing documents, but who are still considered valuable resources for the Directorate. Ordinarily, however, members are expected to participate in the document review process, and a failure to do so will result in the membership being revoked.
• Membership in the IoT Directorate is provisional for new members. Prospective members are asked to write a letter explaining why it makes sense for them to be on the Directorate. Inclusion in the directorate will be subject to AD and/or chair approval.

IOT-DIR Responsible Area Directors & Co-chairs

Name	Role
Éric Vyncke	Responsible IOT-DIR & Internet Area Director
Suresh Krishnan	Internet Area Director
Ari Keränen	IOT-DIR co-chair
Samita Chakrabarti	IOT-DIR co-chair

Directorate chairs e-mail contact: iot-directorate-owner (at) ietf.org

More Information on IOT Directorate and reviews:

​https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/iotdir/about/

Areas of Expertise

Members have different areas of expertise. These are listed here: [IotAreasOfExpertise]

Confirmed Members (in alphabetical order by last name)

Name	IoT Expertise	Employment Type	Notes
Emmanuel Baccelli	protocol design, IoT routing, hands-on implementation (​RIOT, Linux)	Academic (Applied Research)	Focus: low-end IoT devices, open source IoT software
Dominique Barthel	IoT device hardware, energy expenditure, Layer 2 and 3 protocols, LPWANs, ROLL co-chair	Industrial, Telecom R&D	special emphasis on low power long battery life systems
Henk Birkholz	Terminology, Architecture, Remote Attestation, Security Automation	Industrial R&D, Academic	TCG liaison Providing the foundation to create security telemetry in order to fuel machine learning and algorithmic intelligence in the domain of security automation
Carsten Bormann	Protocol Design, Scalability and Architecture vs. Garrulity and Fluff, Usable Security; Data representation and modeling (CBOR, CDDL, WISHI); CoRE co-chair, T2TRG co-chair	Academic, Technology	Focusing on enabling constrained devices [RFC7228] as part of IoT
Nancy Cam-Winget	802.11, 802.15, 802.1X, ISA, ODVA, IIC	Industrial R&D	Interested in Industrial IoT including transport and security
Zhen Cao	Cloudify IoT, LWIG co-chair	Industrial R&D	To cloudify everThing via lightweight implementations
Samita Chakrabarti	IP & Broadband,6lowpan,5G, Cloud, 6lo	Industrial, Telecom R&D	Like to see IETF IOT protocols being used in the Industry
Benoit Claise	Operations & Management	Industry
Subir Das	ZigBee Mesh IP, 6lo, 802.11, 802.15, 802.21 and 5G	Industrial R&D	Interested in IoT networks and security
Wesley Eddy	space networks, avionics, smart fabric	commercial and government R&D	especially interested in transport topics
Mehmet Ersue	Management of networks with constrained devices, RESTCONF	Industrial (retired)
Stefanie Gerdes	Secure Protocol Design, Usable Security	Academic	especially interested in Authentication and Authorization
Carles Gomez	6LoWPAN/6lo, 802.15.4, BLE, LPWAN, end-to-end reliability	Academic	interest in IPv6 over IoT foo and protocol stack optimization
Brian Haberman	Scaled-down IPv6 protocol stacks, IoT bootstrapping, network traffic performance/analysis	Academic (Applied Research)
Russ Housley	IoT Security and Software Update	Industry Consulting
Cullen Jennings	COAP, APIs, Application platforms	Industry	Working on secure enrollment and platform APIs
Jaime Jiménez	CoAP, Device Management; CoRE co-chair	Industrial, Telecom R&D
Benjamin Kaduk	SEC AD, OpenSSL, Kerberos	(non-IoT) Industry
Ari Keränen	CoAP / CoRE technologies, data models, semantics, IoT Device Lifecycle Management; T2TRG co-chair	Industrial, Telecom R&D
Matthias Kovatsch	Architecture, Application Layer, Implementation, CoAP, Industrial IoT	Industrial R&D	W3C Web of Things co-chair
Suresh Krishnan	INTAREA AD	Telecom & Industrial R&D
Eliot Lear	Device identity, onbarding, and protection, device/network interface	Networking Products
Ted Lemon	Thread, Service Discovery, 802.15.4 mesh, constrained-to-homenet autodiscovery	Constrained network infrastructure
Jason Livingood	Co-editor of BITAG IoT Security and Privacy paper, general operator interest	Industry	Focused on security and privacy for IoT, from impact on end users to impact on network operators and attack targets
Daniel Lux	IOT	Industry & telecom	Focusing on constrained, particularly battery operated devices, security and devices communicating over extremely low bandwidth channels
Terry Manderson	Previous INTAREA AD	Industrial & Telecom R&D
Daniel Migault	ACE chair, Security	Industrial & Telecom R&D
Geoff Mulligan	ZigBee, IP, CPS, 6lowpan, IPSO	Industrial and Gov
Bruce Nordman	Energy Efficiency	Academic and Gov	Architecture
Erik Nordmark	Edge computing and IoT; onboarding, security, etc	Industrial R&D	Architecture, Edge Computing, Zero Trust, Linux Foundation Project EVE
Francesca Palombini	CBOR co-chair, CoAP / CoRE technologies, IoT security	Industrial, Telecom R&D
Alexander Pelov	LPWAN co-chair, COAP, IoT security	Low-Power Long-Range Wireless IOT, Industrial, Telecom
Charlie Perkins	IOT, Mobility, IEEE	Industry & Telecom R&D	Energy saving, performance improvement
Michael Richardson	Linux, Contiki, ROLL, security, and EnrollmentRoadmap	Industry	also think Authorization is key to success
Ines Robles	ROLL co-chair, IoT Management	Academic, Technology Research	Doing a PhD in IoT-Management oriented to application layer protocols
Dan Romascanu	OPS and Management, IEEE protocols	Industrial (retired)
Gonzalo Salgueiro	IoT,CoAP,IPv6,CoRE, IPWAVE	Industry Research & Academia	Especially interested in IoT support & troubleshooting, Authoring book on IoT
Jim Schaad	ACE co-chair, COSE, IoT security	Retired
Juergen Schoenwaelder	6lowpan, roll, yang, restconf, embedded linux	Academic (Applied Research)	system software security
Eve Schooler	IoT & Edge computing, ICN, RAW and COIN co-chair, discovery, data lifecycle, QoS	Industry	Intel IoT Group / Next Generation & Standards
Mohit Sethi	IoT security, EMU co-chair and LWIG co-chair, hands on code, secure bootstrapping	Industry Research	Interested in network security for IoT
Robert Sparks	IAB	Industry
Peter van der Stok	ROLL co-chair	Industry	Building control
Dave Thaler	SUIT,TEEP co-chair	Industry	Security
Pascal Thubert	6TiSCH & LPWAN co-chair, RPL & ISA100.11a co-editor, 6LoWPAN 6loRH, HC & ND co-author	Industrial R&AD	Interested in problems connecting the IoT to the Internet e.g. e2e determinism for industrial and vehicular apps
Marco Tiloca	CoRE co-chair, ACE, IoT Security, hands on code	Academic (Applied Research)	Interested in secure communication, key management and access control, especially in group communication settings.
Hannes Tschofenig	Chairing a working group in a relevant area; working for ARM	Industry	I am particularly interested in security aspects.
Mališa Vučinić	LAKE co-chair, 6TiSCH, hands-on code	Academic (Applied Research)
Éric Vyncke	Internet area AD	Industry
Thomas Watteyne	6TiSCH co-chair, hands-on implementation	Industrial (Low-Power Wireless)
Timothy Winters	IPv6, IoT	Industry and University