How has India faired in IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force)?
Some people may not be aware of what IETF is?
IETF is a standard body whose goal is to make the Internet work better.
I have been participating in IETF on and off for couple of years. I was interested in finding out contribution trends in IETF. It was more to find out which company and which country is contributing to IETF. As part of this, I looked at India's contribution to IETF. When I say India's contribution, I am refering to contribution from people working in India.
In last couple of years, while I have seen an exponential increase in the contribution from India, I think it is still far from 'our best effort'. Let me share some statistics to prove my point:
I agree that these statisitcs do not paint a rosy picture. To bring out the relative performance of India, I decided to see this data against some other country and choose China. I choose China for a very specific reason as China and India, both started contributing in IETF around the same time. Let us look at similar numbers for China:
So based on the numbers, its clear that China's contribution in IETF is growing with far better rate than ours.
I just wanted to point out our (India) dismal standalone as well as relative performance in one of the leading standardize body (IETF).
In some future post, I will discuss what we, as individuals, as companies and as a country, should do to improve the quality and quantity of this participation. I would request people to think and post their suggestions on the same.
Credit:
All the IETF data mentioned in this post has been fetched from IETF statistics web page..
Some people may not be aware of what IETF is?
IETF is a standard body whose goal is to make the Internet work better.
I have been participating in IETF on and off for couple of years. I was interested in finding out contribution trends in IETF. It was more to find out which company and which country is contributing to IETF. As part of this, I looked at India's contribution to IETF. When I say India's contribution, I am refering to contribution from people working in India.
In last couple of years, while I have seen an exponential increase in the contribution from India, I think it is still far from 'our best effort'. Let me share some statistics to prove my point:
- Out of around 60 countries who has contributed in IETF, India's contribution keep us at 13th place.
- Out of around 53 countries currently active in IETF, India comes at 9th place.
- Out of around 9000 documents in IETF, only 180 documents (around 1.95%) has come from India.
- Out of around 6700 RFCs created till now, only 72 RFCs (around 1.07%) has come from India.
- Out of around 15700 authors in IETF, only 67 authors has come from India.
- Out of around 100 working groups in IETF, authors from India are active only in 29 working groups.
- As far as I know, till now, there has never been anybody from India who has been a working group chair or Area Director in IETF.
- India has never hosted an IETF meeting.
I agree that these statisitcs do not paint a rosy picture. To bring out the relative performance of India, I decided to see this data against some other country and choose China. I choose China for a very specific reason as China and India, both started contributing in IETF around the same time. Let us look at similar numbers for China:
- Out of around 60 countries, China is at 4th place.
- Out of around 53 countries currently active in IETF, China is at 2nd place.
- Out of around 9000 documents in IETF, 583 documents (6.30%) has come from China.
- Out of around 6700 RFCs created till now, 127 RFCs (1.88%) has come from China.
- Out of around 15700 authors in IETF, only 337 authors has come from China.
- Out of around 100 working groups in IETF, authors from China are active in more than 50 working groups.
- China has hosted an IETF meeting.
So based on the numbers, its clear that China's contribution in IETF is growing with far better rate than ours.
I just wanted to point out our (India) dismal standalone as well as relative performance in one of the leading standardize body (IETF).
In some future post, I will discuss what we, as individuals, as companies and as a country, should do to improve the quality and quantity of this participation. I would request people to think and post their suggestions on the same.
Credit:
All the IETF data mentioned in this post has been fetched from IETF statistics web page..
There are many reasons for poor participation from India (As you already know :) )
ReplyDelete1. IETF is specifically for networking products. Lot of companies in India are services oriented and dont have networking products of their own. So innovations here doesnt make business sense to service companies.
2. IETF is painfully long process. A draft becoming a RFC has to pass through different hurdles (Political/Technical etc) which might take years. This involves lot of travel which is again a cost to the company. Not many companies from India may be willing to sponsor such trips
3. India's poor infrastructure means that hosting a big event like IETF is extremely difficult. Its not only the hotel hosting the meeting, there has to be hotels of similar quality near by with good transport mechanism. Its very difficult to find such things in India
4. Since India is not hosting any event, travel again becomes a challenge as it is expensive.
Having said that, I am sure there is a lot more participation from India now. A lot of focus is being given to innovation, R&D etc. You should probably talk to Infosys management and get one event hosted in Infy Mysore :)
Pavan,
DeleteThanks a lot for sharing your views.
For point 1, I think tide is now changing. Services companies are now offering end-to-end product development. Some of the service companies have created their own reusable IP in this space. While I think we have the technical know-how, somehow it has not translated into contribution in IETF.
For point 2, I partially agree here. Service companies have tight control on budgets and it is difficult to travel all the time.
For point 3, its a catch-22 situation. My hope is that this will change in coming years.
Have you looked at what is stopping some of the MNCs in India to contribute more? AFAIK, they may not be having the first two issues you mentioned.
Regards,
Bharat
Nice article.
ReplyDeleteA few things:
Is it also possible that you can get statistics across time on India's recent participation? Is it on the increase?
What about participation from universities across a India or a China?
Ashwin,
DeleteWhat I have collected is nothing but last few years participation only. Not many participants were active before 2005. This is same for China as well.
Regarding participation from universities, let me check. I may need to tweak the statistics collection tools to figure this out.
What do you think India should do to improve the participation?
Regards,
Bharat