Suggested IETF 127 Sessions for Getting Familiar with New Topics

If you are a new IETF participant, or if you are an experienced participant who would like to get familiar with a new topic, there are many sessions at the IETF 127 San Francisco meeting that will include interesting discussions. Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) sessions in particular may be interesting as BoFs are one way for potential new work to be discussed in the IETF community. A full agenda is available on the IETF Datatracker. Additional information about and links to session agendas will be added to this page as they are available.

If you are new to the IETF or just new to IETF meetings, please be sure to consider registering for the expanded New Participant Program. Once you've registered for the IETF 127 meeting, additional sign up is required via your participant dashboard for this free program on Sunday, 15 November 2026 at the meeting venue and via remote participation.

Even if you do not register for the IETF 127 meeting, you can watch live streams of selected sessions.

Updated 2026-10-30

This post will be updated as more information for IETF 127 is available. Of particular note, agendas and other materials for sessions are posted very close to agenda times so please check the IETF Datatracker for the latest information.

Meeting week schedule

Note: All times are PST (UTC -8)

SATURDAY, 14 November 2026

10:30-11:00

IETF Hackathon Kickoff (separate free registration required)
Continental 4
The IETF Hackathon is a two-day event where participants develop and test that their code can interoperate with others, or where new code is written, often to implement recent IETF work. The kickoff meeting describes all the projects that will go on this week; they are also already listed on the Hackathon wiki. Feel free to join an existing team to squash some bugs! You do not need to bring code; you can simply join a topic of interest and contribute to existing code, help with testing or in many other ways.

SUNDAY, 15 November 2026

09:30-15:30

New Participant Program
Continental 6
This free of charge program on Sunday, 15 November 2026 will take place at the meeting venue, with morning sessions (09:30-12:45) and afternoon sessions (14:00-15:30). After registering for the IETF 127 meeting, additional sign up is required via your participant dashboard. Participation in all sessions will be available via Meetecho. See the expanded New Participant Program webpage for details about all the sessions.

10:00-12:00

Internet Engineering and Planning Group (IEPG)
Golden Gate 3
The IEPG is an informal gathering that meets on the Sunday prior to IETF meetings. The IEPG sessions cover a wide range of operator and operational topics, and often include real-world measurements, discussions around deployment issues, as well as more academic research type presentations. Unlike IETF working groups, it does not work on or generate Internet-Drafts.

14:00-16:00

Hackathon Results Presentations
Continental 4
IETF Hackathon participants brief the group about what they accomplished.

16:00-17:00

New Participants' Quick Connections (Open to new participants only)
Continental 3
The Quick Connections is a simple and effective way for new participants to be introduced to a variety of experienced IETF participants—often working group (WG) chairs, Area Directors, and Internet Architecture Board (IAB) members—who can help you get more involved in your areas of interest. Pre-registration is required and available on your participant dashboard after you have registered for the IETF 127 meeting.

17:00-19:00

Welcome Reception
Yosemite Ballroom
This is the official opening session of the IETF meeting week. Come by and meet some new people with drinks and free snacks.

18:00-20:00

HotRFC Lightning Talks
Continental 6
See rapid-fire presentations about new standards work or new research topics, updates on cross-area IETF work and relevant technologies, and industry advances that could affect IETF participants.

MONDAY, 16 November 2026

09:00-11:00 Monday Session I

Dispatch (dispatch)
Continental 6
Following the conclusion of the Security Dispatch (SECDISPATCH) working group in August 2026, DISPATCH now considers proposals for new work in the Security (SEC), Web and Internet Transport (WIT), and Applications and Real-Time (ART) Areas. Run in DISPATCH-style (see RFC 7957), it is intended to consider proposals for new work and, if the work is appropriate for the IETF and there is sufficient interest, to identify or help create an appropriate venue for the work.

11:30-12:30 Monday Session II

Routing Area Open Meeting (rtgarea)
Continental 6
The Routing Area open meeting provides an overview of activities across the Routing (RTG) Area and an opportunity for the community to discuss topics that span the area's working groups.

14:00-16:00 Monday Session III

Agent Communication Protocols (agentproto)
Continental 5
This newly formed working group in the ART Area was chartered in October 2026 following a working-group-forming BoF at IETF 126. The group will define protocol building blocks that allow AI agents to communicate reliably with tools and with other agents so that interoperable implementations can be provided by multiple vendors. This is the first meeting of the working group.

Scalable QUIC-Assisted Distribution (squad) BoF
Continental 6
Many applications, such as live media, software updates, and large shared datasets, send identical data to many receivers, usually over separate unicast connections. This non-working-group-forming BoF will explore an extension to QUIC that could optionally use Source-Specific Multicast for that common data, while each receiver keeps an ordinary QUIC connection for authentication, feedback, repair, and fallback. The session aims to build a shared problem statement and suggest requirements building on expertise in  the transport, multicast, operations, and application communities, including Media over QUIC (MOQ) implementers. See the BoF request for more information.

16:30-18:30 Monday Session IV

MTA Hooks (mtahooks) BoF
Continental 6
Mail Transfer Agents (MTAs) routinely hand off decisions to external services for spam and virus filtering, policy enforcement, signing, and more, but the de facto mechanisms for this only cover the reception of a message, and what happens after acceptance varies from one MTA to the next. This working-group-forming BoF will discuss a proposed charter for a standard HTTP-based protocol that lets an MTA delegate per-message processing across the whole lifetime of a message, from the SMTP conversation through routing, delivery, and delivery status notifications. The work was previously discussed in the DISPATCH session during IETF 125.

Protocol for Transposed Transactions over HTTP (ptth)
Continental 4
Following BoFs at IETF 123 and IETF 126, a proposed charter for a PTTH working group is now under IESG review. The proposed working group would establish a uniform and secure method for swapping HTTP server and client roles in an interoperable manner—for example, when a server should only be reached by a small number of approved clients that it knows how to contact, but is not widely accessible due to security or routing constraints. Today, multiple proprietary or vendor-specific solutions are deployed for these use cases.

Proposed Networking for AI Research Group (net4ai)
Golden Gate 3
This proposed Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) research group aims to host a principled, longer-term discussion of what the Internet needs to support distributed, multi-stakeholder AI systems. Possible research topics include adapting Internet protocols for AI workloads, agent communication beyond human-readable exchanges, caching and content distribution for AI inference, agent identity, naming, and addressing, and new security requirements for agentic AI.

18:30-19:30

Hackdemo Happy Hour
East Lounge (Ballroom Level)
A social gathering to highlight work accomplished during the preceding IETF Hackathon.

19:00-21:00

New Participants' Dinner (Open to new participants only)
Continental 3
This dinner is a chance to meet other newcomers to IETF meetings and is organized by the Secretariat. Please note that pre-registration is required, and a fee will be charged. More information is available on the New Participants webpage.

TUESDAY, 17 November 2026

09:00-10:30 Tuesday Session I

Agent Use of Delegation and Interaction Traceability (audit) BoF
Continental 6
As software agents increasingly act on behalf of users across multiple services and administrative domains, it becomes harder to answer basic questions such as who initiated an action, under what authority, and how permissions changed along the way. This working-group-forming BoF will discuss interoperable mechanisms and data models for recording, exchanging, and verifying audit information across the full chain of interactions between users, agents, subagents, and tools, building on existing work such as OAuth, HTTP, and attestation and transparency frameworks. The BoF follows a side meeting at IETF 126; see the BoF request for more information.

11:00-12:30 Tuesday Session II

IAB Open Meeting (iabopen)
Continental 6
In this session, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) provides a detailed update on their technical programs, workshops, and current work-in-process architectural guidance documents, and seeks community input.

14:00-16:00 Tuesday Session III

Email Address Verification (evp) BoF
Continental 6
Applications typically verify that a user controls an email address by sending a one-time passcode or link, a step where many users give up and which can be exploited by phishing. This working-group-forming BoF will discuss two starting proposals: the Email Verification Protocol, which lets a browser or operating system obtain a signed token showing the user controls an address without a message being sent, and an OTP-Token email header field for carrying origin-bound codes in machine-readable form. The work was presented at DISPATCH during IETF 126, which recommended a BoF. See the BoF request for more information.

Operations and Management Area Working Group (opsawg)
Golden Gate 7-8
The Operations and Management Area Working Group is a forum for work in the Operations and Management (OPS) Area that does not fit within an existing working group or does not justify the formation of a new one.

16:30-18:30 Tuesday Session IV

Operations & Management Area Open Meeting (opsarea)
Continental 5
The OPS Area open meeting provides an overview of activities in the area and an opportunity to discuss operational topics of broad interest.

Measurement and Analysis for Protocols Research Group (maprg)
Golden Gate 4-5
MAPRG seeks to bridge the gap between Internet standards and measurement communities. It supports exchange of measurement-derived insight, discussion of techniques and best practices for measurement relevant to protocol engineering and network operations, collaborations to share data supporting these measurements, and a "landing pad" for the Internet measurement community to introduce its efforts to the IETF.

18:15-20:15

IETF Board Game Night
Continental 3
Please join us for an evening of board games, light snacks, and non-alcoholic beverages. Some board games and puzzles will be provided, though bringing your own game to share is encouraged. We offer games that vary in difficulty and game play length.

WEDNESDAY, 18 November 2026

09:00-11:00 Wednesday Session I

General Area Open Meeting (genarea)
Continental 6
The General (GEN) Area open meeting provides an update on work in the GEN Area, which typically covers the IETF's processes and process documents, along with an opportunity for community discussion. The session will explore AI use in the IETF standards process, including highlighting practices that enhance the standards process with AI and identifying how the standards process is being challenged and/or needs to evolve due to AI.

Technology Deep Dive: Network Analytics in Practice: An End-to-End Operational Story
Golden Gate 7-8
Join this session for an approachable walk through how network analytics are put into practice in operational networks, from end to end.

11:30-12:30 Wednesday Session II

Web and Internet Transport Area Open Meeting (witarea)
Continental 4
The WITAREA open meeting provides an overview of ongoing activities in the  WIT Area activities and presentations covering deployments and sharing operational experience.

14:00-16:00 Wednesday Session III

Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) Open Meeting (irtfopen)
Continental 4
News and updates from the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), along with talks by recent Applied Networking Research Prize winners.

18:00-20:00

IETF Plenary
Continental 5-6
The plenary is the one meeting addressed to the entire IETF community. There are leadership reports about the state of the IETF, as well as "open mic" sessions for community feedback on a broad range of topics.

THURSDAY, 19 November 2026

09:00-10:30 Thursday Session I

Internet Area Working Group (intarea)
Continental 5
The Internet Area Working Group acts primarily as a forum for discussing far-ranging topics that affect the entire area. Such topics include, for instance, address space issues, basic IP layer functionality, and architectural questions. The group also serves as a forum to distribute information about ongoing activities in the area, create a shared understanding of the challenges and goals for the area, and to enable coordination.

12:45-13:45

Host Speaker Series: Verisign at IETF: Our Collaborations, Our Progress, What’s Next
Continental 4
For over 40 years, Verisign and IETF’s histories have been intertwined. From initial DNS provisioning and widespread deployment of PKI to planning for new uses of domain names and post-quantum cryptography, Verisign has engaged with the IETF community to shape the protocols and standards that define the Internet, helping to keep it secure, stable, and resilient. In this presentation, President and CEO Jim Bidzos and SVP and CTO Dr. Burt Kaliski, Jr. will provide a historical perspective on the evolution of cryptography standards; discuss previous successful collaborations, the challenges to come, and opportunities for engagement; and share how our learnings from 40 years of cooperation and achievement can chart a course for what lies ahead.

14:00-16:00 Thursday Session III

Moderation Of unLinkable Endorsements (mole) BoF
Continental 6
Websites have a hard time deciding whether to serve new visitors who may be legitimate users or abusive bots, and familiar tools such as CAPTCHAs are becoming less effective. Building on lessons from Privacy Pass, this working-group-forming BoF will discuss an architecture that gives clients authenticated but unlinkable state, allowing sites to apply privacy-preserving, dynamic rate limits, anchored by scarce endorsement tokens that can come from a diverse set of issuers. The Web Bot Auth (WEBBOTAUTH) working group is among those looking to build on this work. See the BoF request for more information.

16:30-18:30 Thursday Session IV

Discovery of Agents With Names (dawn)
Continental 4
This newly formed working group in the Internet (INT) Area was chartered in October 2026 following a working-group-forming BoF at IETF 126. DAWN focuses on how a client can discover agents in an interoperable way, considering existing mechanisms such as DNS and mDNS, and will coordinate closely with related work in WIMSE, OAUTH, and AGENTPROTO. This is the first meeting of the working group.

Routing Area Working Group (rtgwg)
Continental 6
This session is a venue to discuss, evaluate, support, and develop proposals for new work in the Routing Area. This working group also works on fast-reroute, YANG models, and other general routing topics.

Research and Analysis of Standard-setting Processes Research Group (rasprg)
Golden Gate 1
The Research and Analysis of Standard-Setting Processes Research Group (RASPRG) aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, policy makers, standards users, and standards developers to study standardization processes across SDOs, with a particular focus on Internet standard-setting in the IETF. The research is aimed at informing the comprehension of standardization processes and policies, and possibly providing tools and insights.

18:45-19:45

New Participants' Social Hour (Open to new participants only)
Continental 3
This gathering is a great opportunity for new participants to share their experiences and discuss topics of interest with IETF leadership. More information is available on the New Participants webpage.

FRIDAY, 20 November 2026

09:00-11:00 Friday Session I

Transport and Services Working Group (tsvwg)
Continental 6
The Transport and Services Working Group (TSVWG) is the forum for development and publication of RFCs relating to the core Internet transport system and a home for transport-layer topics that are not in scope of an existing working group or do not justify the formation of a new working group.

11:30-12:30 Friday Session II

General Area Dispatch (gendispatch)
Continental 6
This session allows for discussion of items being proposed for work in the General (GEN) Area. GEN Area work typically includes proposals for changes or improvements to the IETF process and process documents. GENDISPATCH does not consider any technical standardization work.

14:00-15:30 Friday Session III

Security Area Open Meeting (saag)
Continental 5
The Security Area Advisory Group (SAAG) is an open forum of the Security Area to discuss security and privacy issues. It typically meets during the face-to-face IETF meeting. SAAG is not a working group and does not adopt or publish documents.

17:30-18:30

Farewell Reception
Yosemite Ballroom
Join other IETF 127 participants to wrap-up meeting week with drinks and snacks provided.

ENDS