Bangkok, 15th-16th March 2025
The IETF 122 Hackathon, held in March 2025, was not just another technical sprint—it was a global stage for Internet technologists to prototype, test, and improve emerging protocols that power the Internet. And for the first time, AIORI 1 Hackathon winners from India made a powerful debut, demonstrating that India is not only consuming the Internet but actively shaping its future.
What is IETF 122?
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the premier standards body responsible for developing open standards that shape the core of the Internet. The IETF 122 Hackathon, a precursor to the main IETF meeting, brought engineers, researchers, and open-source contributors together to test and implement drafts and RFCs in real-world scenarios.
Held globally, the IETF 122 Hackathon was a blend of collaboration, innovation, and community-driven problem solving.
India’s Rising Footprint at IETF 122
Through the AIORI initiative (Advanced Internet Operations Research in India), two winning teams from the IEEE IC Hackathon—Red Relay (Debarghya Bhattacharya, Aditya Ghosh, Dipankar Basu) and SecureNet Innovators (Sampurna Pyne, Nabhonil Bhattacharya, Raja Karmakar) —participated at IETF 122. They brought with them an Indian perspective to global technical challenges, showcasing open-source tools and DNS measurement capabilities developed entirely within the country.
Project: Evaluating the Performance of DNS Server Software using IPv6 PDM
Their IETF 122 contribution focused on RFC 8250 – IPv6 Performance and Diagnostic Metrics (PDM). Using the AIORI Internet Measurement Network (AIORI-IMN) platform, the teams:
- Implemented PDM support in both kernel and user space
- Evaluated DNS software (e.g., BIND, PowerDNS) under IPv6 testbed scenarios
- Created an end-to-end toolchain using Linux kernel modules, eBPF, and a Python PDM package
- Contributed improvements to Scapy, a major open-source network testing tool
GitHub Repos:
Presentation at IETF:
[Slides on Datatracker](https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/122/materials/slides-122-hackathon-sessd-evaluating-the-performance-of-different-dns-server-software-implementations-with-pdm-using-aiori-imn-measurement-platform-01)
Why This Matters
This wasn’t just a showcase of technical skill. It marked:
- India’s first hackathon-to-IETF contribution cycle under AIORI
- Operationalization of IETF RFCs on a national measurement platform
- Open-source collaboration with international contributors
- A successful demonstration of India-origin standards work on the global stage
