End-to-End Research Group (END2END)

Charter

The End-to-End (E2E) Research Group provides a forum for interchange of ideas and information among a group of network researchers with common interests. These researchers are primarily but not exclusively associated with the Internet.

The specific topics of interest to the E2E RG have changed as network research has advanced, but it is generally concerned with end-to-end services and protocols implemented in hosts, such as transport protocols and implementation architecture for high performance. The latter includes a variety of topics, e.g., presentation layer design, application-layer framing, high-performance host interfaces, and efficient protocol implementation techniques. Development of new service modes has taken the E2E group into particular Internet-layer issues, particularly multicasting as well as traffic control and scheduling. It has also led to the discussion of new application-layer services, e.g., RPC and “real-time” applications like packet voice and video.

Historically, the E2E RG has monitored and expedited the development of IP multicasting, VMTP, and congestion avoidance/control mechanisms. It also nucleated the planning for DARTnet, the DARPA Research Testbed network.

The research group operates in a closed fashion. Membership is limited and at the chairs’ discretion. However, the research group maintains a public mailing list that anyone is free to join and encourages interested parties to raise request questions on the list.

Chair

Craig Partridge, craig@aland.bbn.com and Karen Sollins, sollins@csail.mit.edu.

Mailing List

The End-to-End Research Group maintains an open mailing list at end2end-interest@postel.org.

List policies and subscription information may be found at http://www.postel.org/e2e.htm.