The Internet’s Transport Layer has been defined by TCP and UDP for the last 30 years. The minimal functionality of UDP enables application developers to develop their own proprietary protocols – there are plenty of examples. Developing a new transport protocol is not easy, often goes wrong, and entails re-inventing the wheel. If there is any hope of improving this situation, then it requires putting new transport mechanisms “under the hood” and defining a set of transport services that should be exposed to applications rather than a choice of 2 protocols. This is the focus of the newly chartered IETF Working Group on Transport Services (TAPS). Can this group make a real change to the Internet’s transport layer, or will it develop yet another set of standards that nobody cares about?

About Michael Welzl 

Michael Welzl is a full professor in the Department of Informatics of the University of Oslo since 2009. He received his Ph.D. (with distinction) and his habilitation from the University of Darmstadt / Germany in 2002 and 2007, respectively, and worked at the Universities of Linz and Innsbruck in Austria. His habilitation thesis, the Wiley book “Network Congestion Control: Managing Internet Traffic”, is the only introductory book on network congestion control. Michael is active in the IETF and IRTF, e.g. as chair of the Internet Congestion Control Research Group (ICCRG) and by leading the effort to form the Transport Services (TAPS) Working Group. He has also been participating in several European research projects, including roles such as coordinator and technical manager.

For more info, visit his website: http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~michawe/

This event will be conducted in English