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Cisco extends its commitment to the IETF with USD 1.3 Million of support
2 Apr 2025
Cisco, a long-standing supporter of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), today announced a contribution of new equipment valued at USD 1.3 Million to support the IETF meeting networks that provide unsurpassed networking performance to the more than 1000 participants who gather onsite and remotely for three, week-long plenary meetings held around the world each year.
IETF meeting networks support IETF Hackathons and Working Group sessions for close to 1000 onsite and 500 remote participants, throughout more than 100 working sessions held during each meeting. Beyond enabling onsite attendees to collaborate, the meeting network provides critical connectivity that enables remote attendees to fully participate in sessions.
These equipment contributions—which include new Wi-Fi 7 access points, modern access switches, and high-performance servers—will allow attendees to connect to the network using cutting-edge access technologies, allowing participants to work as effectively as possible, whether they are at the meeting venue or joining from around the world.
Juan Carlos Zúñiga, Distinguished Engineer of Global Technology Standards (GTS) at Cisco, said, “We are pleased to extend our ongoing support of the IETF community’s work on open standards that form the technical foundations for the global Internet. Providing the latest wireless and wired technologies for accessing the Internet is critical to running IETF meetings efficiently, ensuring the best user experience for both onsite and remote participants. ”
IETF meeting networks also regularly deploy emerging technologies for special projects at the IETF Hackathon. For example, the L4S, or Low Latency, Low Loss, Scalable Throughput [RFC 9330] networking technology that optimizes internet traffic performance by minimizing latency and packet loss, especially for real-time applications like online gaming and video conferencing, has been a project at every IETF Hackathon for the past several years.
As a broader example, the IETF 122 meeting network tested an “IPv6-Mostly” Preferred Option [RFC 8925] SSID in advance of planned deployment as the default SSID for the more than 1000 onsite participants expected at the IETF 123 Madrid meeting in July. This technology allows devices to signal a preference for IPv6-only operation while automatically supporting IPv4 via translation mechanisms, if needed.
IETF meeting networks are designed, deployed, and managed by the IETF NOC (Network Operations Center) team, which includes expert volunteers from the IETF community, like Joe Clarke, Distinguished Engineer of Cisco’s Learning & Certifications team.
Cisco also supports the IETF as a Global Host, the highest level of commitment and recognition among all IETF sponsors.
For more information about upcoming IETF meetings and the networking that supports them, see the IETF meeting networking webpage.