First RFC for the Faculty of Computer Science

RFC 9510, published in February, is the first Requests for Comments co-authored by a member of the Faculty of Computer Science at TU Dresden. Work on"Alternative Delta Time Encoding for Content-Centric Networking (CCNx) Using Compact Floating-Point Arithmetic" began in November 2019 and was successfully completed 4.5 years later after thorough discussions and an extensive peer review process. "Disseminating our research results outside the academic community, for example in Internet standardization or in open source projects, involves additional effort. However, it enables us to put our cutting-edge research into practice," explains Prof. Matthias Wählisch, Chair of Distributed and Networked Systems and co-author of RFC 9510.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) are of central importance for open Internet protocols, applications and services. A Request for Comments (RFC) contains technical and organizational content for the Internet, including the specification of protocols (e.g. HTTP) and guidelines. RFCs are part of the publication process of the IETF or IRTF. They undergo a thorough peer review process before publication.

Research on open communication solutions for the Internet is also part of the curriculum at the Faculty of Computer Science at TU Dresden as part of research-oriented teaching. In the winter semester 2023/24, 11 students took part in the 118th meeting of the IETF/IRTF in Prague and presented their projects at a hackathon.