Decentralization of the Internet Research Group DINRG

Internet Research Task Force (IRTF)

Recent years have witnessed the consolidations of the Internet applications, services, as well as the infrastructure. The Decentralization of the Internet Research Group (DINRG) aims to provide for the research and engineering community, both an open forum to discuss the Internet centralization phenomena and associated potential threats, and a platform to facilitate the coordination of efforts in identifying the causes of observed consolidations and the mitigation solutions.

Main Objectives

DINRG’s main objectives include the following:

  • Investigation of the root causes of Internet centralization, and articulation of the impacts of the market economy, architecture and protocol designs, as well as government regulations;
  • Measurement of the Internet centralization and the consequential societal impacts;
  • Characterization and assessment of observed Internet centralization;
  • Development of a common terminology and understanding of (de-)centralization;
  • Interaction with the broader research community to explore new research topics and technical solutions for decentralized system and application development;
  • Documentation of the outcome from the above efforts via different means (e.g., research papers and RFCs) as inputs to the broader conversation around centralization; and
  • Facilitation of discussions between researchers, organizations and individuals involved in Internet standards and regulations.

DINRG will operate as an open platform to different technology solutions, not limited to specific technical approaches. We expect DINRG to foster a better understanding of the merits and constraints of specific technologies with respect to Internet decentralization.

Way of Working

DINRG plans to meet at least once per year at IETF meetings, and may hold additional meetings, either as standalone interim meetings, or co-located meetings at technical conferences and similar events. DINRG will coordinate, and leverage synergies, with other IRTF groups and with the IAB and broader research community.

DINRG will reach out to non-networking communities such as regulatory bodies and economics researchers and explore the opportunity of organizing different formats such as panels and workshops that focus on broader research topics related to the Internet (de)centralization.

Chairs

The DINRG is chaired by Dirk Kutscher and Lixia Zhang.

Mailing List

The DINRG mailing list is din@irtf.org. To subscribe or access the list archives, visit the mailman page.

Datatracker

Documents and meeting materials for the DINRG can be found on the IETF datatracker.

Timeline

The DINRG was chartered on 2017-09-21.