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Birds of a Feather at IETF 126
2 Jul 2026
The IETF 126 Vienna meeting takes place 18–24 July 2026. As at every IETF meeting, alongside the established Working Groups there will be a handful of Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) sessions—and these are often the most interesting place to watch where Internet standards work is heading next.
What is a BoF, and why does it matter?
A Birds-of-a-Feather session is an initial, community-wide discussion about a topic that may be ripe for new work in the IETF. Some BoFs are working-group-forming: their goal is to confirm that there is enough consensus, energy, and a tight enough scope to charter a new Working Group, often with a draft charter already on the table. Others are non-working-group-forming: they exist to take the temperature of the community, refine a problem statement, and identify gaps before anyone commits to chartering anything.
Five BoFs are scheduled for IETF 126, all of them meeting in Grand Park Hall 3 with online remote participation also available. Details for every BoF session are available through the IETF 126 meeting agenda webpage. Some of the BoFs already have active email list discussions underway (though note that names of the email lists and BoFs may not match).
Protocol for Transposed Transactions over HTTP (ptth)
When: Monday, 20 July 2026, 16:30–18:00 CEST
Following a first BoF at IETF 123, PTTH proponents return with a proposed charter for a new Working Group. The goal is a uniform and secure method for swapping HTTP server and client roles in an interoperable manner. This would be used, for example, when a server is only intended to be accessed directly by a small number of clients, the server knows how to reach these approved clients, and the server is not widely accessible by arbitrary clients due to security or routing constraints. Currently, there are multiple proprietary or vendor-specific deployed solutions for each of these use cases. The PTTH mailing list, set up ahead of IETF 123, has an archive with discussions since that time.
Discovery of Agents, Workloads, and Named entities (dawn)
When: Tuesday, 21 July 2026, 14:00–16:00 CEST
DAWN seeks to build consensus around establishing a Working Group to develop requirements notably including but not limited to AI agent to agent, and protocol solutions for an automated, decentralised and interoperable discovery mechanism to meet—at scale—the requirements of distributed processing environments which depend on the interaction between components that do not have this pre-configured capability. An active discussion is already underway on the DAWN mailing list, and available through the email list archive.
Continuous Updating and Ratcheting for Rekeying Encrypted Network Transport (current)
When: Tuesday, 21 July 2026, 16:30–18:00 CEST
CURRENT aims to build consensus for establishing a Working Group to define a two-party security protocol that uses Messaging Layer Security (MLS) for the key management. MLS key management provides asynchronous key updates, forward secrecy (FS), and post-compromise security (PCS). In addition, MLS supports asynchronous communication and both traditional cryptography and Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC). Further, the formal analysis conducted on the MLS protocol provides confidence in the design. The mailing list discussions, captured in the mailing list archive, are already in progress.
Dynamic Multi-agent Secured Collaboration (DMSC)
When: Wednesday, 22 July 2026, 09:00–11:00 CEST
DMSC—a non-Working Group-forming BoF—will explore interoperable protocols and mechanisms for AI Agent Gateway-mediated collaboration, including agent capability exposure, request forwarding, coordination, synchronization, policy control, observability, and secure communication. DMSC will profile existing and evolving mechanisms that are defined elsewhere, identifying any gaps and the potential benefits of a formal definition of an AI agent gateway model to enable dynamic collaboration among AI agents. An active discussion is already underway on the DAWN mailing list, and available through the email list archive.
Agent Communication Protocols (agentproto)
When: Thursday, 23 July 2026, 09:00–11:00 CEST
The past year has seen a rush of competing, overlapping protocols for connecting AI agents to one another and to the tools they use—Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent2Agent (A2A), the Agent Communication Protocol (ACP), the Agent Network Protocol (ANP), and more—alongside a growing number of related Internet-Drafts. The agentproto BoF brings that conversation into the IETF. Building on a well-attended IETF 124 side meeting and the framework, use-cases, and requirements work led by Jonathan Rosenberg and Cullen Jennings, the session aims to identify which building blocks of agent-to-agent and agent-to-tool communication genuinely need to be standardized, with a view toward chartering a Working Group to take that work forward. The mailing list and archives are a good place to catch up on discussions in advance of the BoF.
Take part in IETF 126
BoFs are a great entry point for anyone who wants to help shape what the IETF works on next—whether you are a long-time participant or attending your first meeting. To join the discussions in Vienna, or to participate remotely, register for IETF 126. Agendas and session materials are posted close to each session, so check the IETF Datatracker for the latest details.