Subject: n-1-4-900.06 25th IETF Meeting in Washington On 16-20 November, the world's principal standards body for open computer internetworking standards met at Washington DC. More than seventy working groups drawing nearly 700 participants from around the world focussed on creating and evolving standards universally used by enterprise networks, including the thousands of networks constituting the global Internet. A total of 120 working group sessions were held over the five day period. The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) through its Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the standards making organ of the Internet Society, and produces the world's predominant standards for open interconnecting of information systems. These include the well-known TCP/IP network protocols, as well as a wide variety of messaging, network management, file transfer, directory, data inter- change, knowledge discovery, and gateway protocols to other kinds of networks and information systems. The IETF uses innovative techniques to support the work. Much of the work is done electronically through the Internet. A special terminal room of dozens of advanced networked workstations is specially built at the meeting site by the host organization. Video and audio from two concurrent IETF sessions is also continuously "multicast" through the network to more than 100 sites around the world via the Internet, with return audio. This allows effective remote participation. Key developments at this meeting included: specific alternative migration plans for addressing and routing to accommodate the exponential growth of the Internet; standards for using the In- ternetwork Protocol (IP) over many new transport technologies, especially the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM); a broad array of new techniques for distributed information resources discovery and access across heterogeneous, autonomous networks; improvements in the IETF's own standards process; finalization of new multimedia messaging standards; a new suite of network management, mobile, and se- curity standards. The host of this meeting was the Sprint Corporation which operated the terminal room over its SprintLink Internet Service. The 26th IETF session meets in Columbus, Ohio USA in March 1993; the 27th is in Amsterdam, Netherlands in July 1993. For general information, please contact the Internet Society Secretariat, tel: +1 703 620 8990, fax: +1 703 620 0913, or , or 1895 Preston White Dr, suite 100, Reston VA 22091 USA. On Line IETF Information The Internet Engineering Task Force maintains up-to-date, on-line information on all its activities. This information is available via FTP through the NSFnet Service Center (NNSC) and through several ``shadow'' machines. These ``shadow'' machines may in fact be more convenient than the NNSC. Procedures for retrieving the information are listed below. Directory Locations Information pertaining to the IETF, its Working Groups and Internet Drafts can be found in either the ``IETF'' Directory or the ``Internet-Drafts'' Directory. To retrieve this information via FTP, establish a connection, then Login with username ``anonymous'' and the password requested by the system. This password will either be your login name or ``guest''. When logged in, change to the directory of your choice with the following commands: cd ietf cd internet-drafts Individual files can then be retrieved using the GET command: get e.g., get 00README readme.my.copy