Report from the IAB Workshop on the Next Era of Network Management Operations
RFC 9968, “Report from the IAB Workshop on the Next Era of Network Management Operations”, is an Informational document published in May 2026 by W. Hardaker, D. Dhody. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.
Abstract
The "Next Era of Network Management Operations (NEMOPS)" workshop was convened by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) from December 3-5, 2024 as a three-day online meeting. It builds on a previous 2002 workshop, the outcome of which was documented in RFC 3535, identifying 14 operator requirements for consideration in future network management protocol design and related data models, along with some recommendations for the IETF. Much has changed in the Internet's operation and technological foundations since then. The NEMOPS workshop reviewed the past outcomes and discussed any operational barriers that prevented these technologies from being widely implemented. With the industry, network operators and protocol engineers working in collaboration, the workshop developed a suggested plan of action and network management recommendations for the IETF and IRTF. Building on RFC 3535, this document provides the report of the follow-up IAB workshop on network management.
Note that this document is a report on the proceedings of the workshop. The views and positions documented in this report are those of the workshop participants and do not necessarily reflect IAB views and positions.
What “Informational” means
Published for the general information of the community. It does not define an IETF standard and carries no standards-track status.
The canonical text of RFC 9968 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in HTML,TXT,PDF,XML.
- RFC 9967 System for Cross-Domain Identity Management Profile for Security Event Tokens
- RFC 9969 Report from the IAB Workshop on AI-CONTROL
- RFC 9966 Bootstrapped TLS Authentication with Proof of Knowledge
- RFC 9965 The eap.arpa
- RFC 9964 ML-DSA for JSON Object Signing and Encryption and CBOR Object Signing and Encryption
- RFC 9972 Advanced BGP Monitoring Protocol Statistics Types
- RFC 9963 Legacy RSASSA-PKCS1-v1_5 Code Points for TLS 1.3
- RFC 9962 A Decentralized Locator/ID Separation Protocol Mapping System