On October 7th, 2016 according to Beijing time, the Internet Engineering Task Force (abbreviated as IETF) formally announced the establishment of a Birds-of-a-feather Group, named Bundled Domains (DNSBUNDLED), which was applied mainly by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). It will convene a BOF meeting during the 97th IETF Meeting to be held in November in Seoul, South Korea. The meeting will be co-chaired by James Galvin, Technology Standard Director of Afilias, an international famous domain name company, and Ning Kong, Director of the International Affairs Department of CNNIC.

In accordance with the IETF practice, before the formal approval of the establishment of an international standard working group, it must have discussions through the form of BOF. After the BOF meeting, CNNIC will be expected to set up a formal international standard working group in IETF, and promote the development of international technology standards on the DNS (Domain Name System) protocol, which will provide a solution for fully mapping one domain name to another domain name.

The approval of the BOF group “Bundled Domains” is the second time that CNNIC successfully promoted the set up of a BOF group after an interval of ten years. The first time was in November, 2005, when IETF approved CNNIC to set up a BOF on internationalized email address. Later on, IETF formally approved an international standard working group, and CNNIC Director Xiaodong Li, Co-Chairman of the working group, became the first Chinese person assuming such position in the IETF history.

You are welcome to subscribe to the official mailing list of the BOF group: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/bundled-domain-names, participate in relevant technology discussions, and attend the BOF meeting to be held by CNNIC during the 97th IETF Meeting in Seoul, South Korea.

Background information：

Founded in 1986, the Internet Engineering Task Force（abbreviated as IETF）is an authoritative international organization responsible for the formulation of the Internet technology standards in the world. IETF is mainly in charge of the R&D and development of Internet related technology standards, and has formulated more than 90% of the Internet technology standards. The development of technology standards ensures the stable operation of the Internet. A large number of technology tasks of IETF are undertaken and completed by its internal Working Groups (WG). These WGs are formed according to different kinds of research topics. Before the establishment of a working group, IETF usually set up a BOF (birds of a feather, abbreviated as BOF) group to carry out the preparatory work of the WG. After the completion of the preparatory work and the recognition of IETF high-level research, a WG can officially be established. Every year IETF convenes the IETF meeting three times, which brings together world-leading Internet technology engineers and has more than one thousand participants.