Sustainability and the Internet Proposed Research Group SUSTAIN

Internet Research Task Force (IRTF)

Goal

The goal of the SUSTAIN RG is to contribute to the advancement of the Internet as a fundamental part of sustainable and resilient societies and the planet, through conceptual and evidence-based multi-disciplinary research collaboration.

Scope

The Sustainability and the Internet Research Group (SUSTAIN RG) explores long-term research challenges in developing and operating an environmentally, socially and economically sustainable Internet, from a networking perspective. It provides a venue for discussion, collaboration and development of Internet research on sustainability with a critical view on evidence and data, ensuring the trustworthiness of research results and their transparent dissemination. Grounded in the practical operation of the Internet, the RG will work to promote greater exploration of architectural and policy implications relating to sustainability challenges of internetworking, without going into advocacy actions. Recognizing their interconnectedness, the SUSTAIN RG focuses on the Sustainability of the Internet (footprint), while fostering an appreciation of the Internet for Sustainability (handprint). The SUSTAIN RG adopts a multidisciplinary, systems perspective with lifecycle and supply chain considerations, also taking into account the interdependencies between different types of networks as well as different research disciplines.

Background

The Internet is a global critical infrastructure, on which societies, individuals and businesses depend. It is expected to play a positive role in tackling global challenges such as climate change, decarbonization, and environmental degradation. Yet at the same time, there is growing concern about the negative impacts. Internet technologies are part of value chains that are driving increased energy, materials and natural resource use, and increasing carbon emissions. It is imperative to minimize these negative impacts, to support global sustainability goals, as per the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

There are numerous research challenges for a sustainable Internet and its applications. Characterization, monitoring, management and mitigation of the Internet environmental footprint, as well as the timely collection, distribution and sharing of accurate measurement data and assessments are open challenges. Additionally, there are considerable hurdles in linking the Internet to sustainability outcomes in real-life use cases in a causal way, due to the absence of practical methodologies and examples to do so. The SUSTAIN RG systematically works to frame these challenges for the benefit of the Internet community – architects, developers, operators, users, and policy makers alike.

Research areas

The SUSTAIN RG invites contributions on topics relating to the long-term sustainability of the Internet:

  • Characterization and reduction of the Internet footprint to ensure it is environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable, from a holistic systems perspective, working with quantitative and qualitative indicators, their baselines and targets, measurements and assessments, sharing related data, conceptual and policy frameworks, considering lifecycle as well as supply chain issues, and potential mitigation actions. Specifically: (a) Exploration of the relationship between sustainability and the Internet architecture to understand the implications and sustainability impact and trade-offs of differing approaches to network design; and (b) Investigation of environmental limits and boundaries within which the Internet and its applications should operate safely and the corresponding policy implications.
  • Investigation of the role of policy and regulation in the environmental, social and economic sustainability of the Internet, as complementary to technological and operational factors, for example to incentivize sustainability.
  • Exploration of the impacts of different strategies for managing the potential rebound effects (Jevon’s paradox) of Internet sustainability gains, including technical, policy and regulatory aspects.
  • Appraisal of new methodologies, architectures and strategies to ensure Internet resilience in the face of climate change impacts that are already taking place (climate change adaptation). This is a distinct topic from environmental footprint (climate change mitigation).

Mode of Operation

The SUSTAIN RG will solicit academic, governmental and industrial research contributions with a multi-disciplinary outreach, to enhance the state of the art in our exploration of the relationship between the Internet network infrastructure and applications and sustainability from long-term conceptual, systems and policy perspectives, prioritizing research publications and proof-of-concept implementations, measurements, and demonstrations, over RFC production.

The SUSTAIN RG will hold regular meetings, both co-located with IETF and on-line, encouraging hybrid modes of attendance to reduce the environmental impact of travel, and will organize interim meetings as needed that might align with sustainable networking conferences, workshops and other events. It will coordinate with other IRTF RGs, like GAIA, HRPC, NMRG and DINRG, with IETF WGs like GREEN, TVR, OPSWG, and the IAB E-impact program, as well as with the Internet Society, and the sustainability efforts of other SDOs, industrial consortia, and research organizations. Close coordination with the IETF and IAB is expected to scope their differing work programs and ensure that new work is appropriately sited.

The group will organize awareness-raising activities, such as invited talks from sustainability experts, including from systems, environmental, social and economic sciences and practitioners that work on sustainability target setting, policy, assessments and strategy, to clarify the linkages. It will organize and promote a special session on sustainability at the ACM/IRTF Applied Networking Research Workshop (ANRW), working with the ANRW Program Committee, to develop a broader publication stream for research in this space.

The group may publish RFCs to transfer research results and feedback to the IETF community but will defer to the IETF for technology standardization. The aim of the RFC series output from SUSTAIN RG is to take stock of state-of-the-art research results, highlight areas where further work is needed, and identify policy concerns and strategy opportunities with the broader Internet community. While the SUSTAIN RG may conduct research into new metrics and protocol mechanisms, it is expected that these will be described in research papers, and the development of such technologies to the point of RFC publication will normally occur in the IETF.

Membership

Membership in the SUSTAIN is open to all interested parties.

Chairs

SUSTAIN is chaired by Ali Rezaki, Eve Schooler and Michael Welzl.

Mailing List

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

Datatracker

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

Timeline

The SUSTAIN was chartered on 2025-01-17.