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The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is currently looking for a new chairmanwhich steers the work of the organisation established to standardise Internet standards. Surprisingly, two employees of Futurewei, a Chinese research company belonging to Huawei, also applied.
The employees are Barry Leiba and Alvaro Retana. Leiba has been working for Huawei since 2009 and previously worked for IBM for a long time. Retana is a former Cisco engineer and is now Vice President Strategy at Futurewei in the Future Networks division, responsible for the "New IP" concept, which is intended to replace the current Internet standard TCP/IP.
Parallel activity at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
This is particularly surprising because, in parallel to the candidacy for the IETF chairmanship, Huawei is trying to establish a new Internet architecture at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which is contrary to the interests of the IETF. Moreover, Huawei and thus also its subsidiary Futurewei is still subject to sanctions imposed by the US government. The candidacy of the two Futurewei employees is therefore also explosive from a political perspective.
New-IP to make the Internet more efficient
According to Huawei, the New-IP Internet standard will replace the current Web hosting used TCP/IP. According to the Chinese company, this is not powerful enough for demanding usage scenarios. So far, the concept, which also uses the name Future Vertical Communications Networks (FCVN), has already been rejected four times by IETF participants.
It seems that after the unsuccessful attempts to establish the Internet standard, the Chinese company Huawei is now trying to use the US American Barry Leiba for its own purposes. Leiba is a long-time IETF participant and has published numerous RFC specifications in the e-mail field. He is considered well connected and influential in the IETF. Whether this is sufficient to convince the nomination committee of Huawei's New IP plans is questionable, however.
Further applicants also from Germany
In any case, according to a number of experts, the most likely scenario is that the nomination committee will choose another candidate in order to avoid Huawei's influence and the threat of political trouble. The candidates who have applied for the IETF chairmanship include Adrian Farrel and the former Cisco engineer Fred Baker. In the period from 1996 to 2002, Baker was already the Chairman of the IETF. His chances for re-election should be good.
In addition. Lars Eggert from NetApp, RI salt from Akamai and Deborah Brungard of AT&T for the presidency. Although Eggert is one of the younger applicants, he has been able to demonstrate his expertise in the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) of the IETF for several years. It is possible that the IETF will thus receive its first chairman from Germany. The election will take place in early 2021.
