I got Internet Society (ISOC) Fellowship to attend the 82nd Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) held in Taipei, Taiwan from 13-18 November 2011.
The IETF is a place where people belonging to Industry and Academia, around the Globe come together, collaborate and envision future Internet. Work in IETF is divided into different groups. Each groups consists of people having different culture, diverse expertise and are from different organizations specially Network Operators, Vendors of networking devices, Academia and Solution Providers. The common among them is intellectual interest and 'Internet for All'.
Attending IETF meeting was altogether a new experience where problems from industry were presented for a very brief time. Most of the work is in IETF is done on the mailing list of different WGs. Suggestions and comments are given and updates are again posted to the WGs mailing list.
After attending 82nd IETF meeting, I strongly felt that Academia at large is unaware of the Role of IETF and that there is a great need of Academai-Industry collaboration in majority of our Academic institutions. Internet evolution and sustainability did not occur itself rather, a dedicated & coordinated multi-disciplinary team with a single objective to share and spread knowledge in each part of the world, made it to happen and sustain.
