[DRAFT] Web & Networks Interest Group Charter

The mission of the Web & Networks Interest Group is to explore solutions for web applications to leverage network information and capabilities, and edge compute to achieve better performance and better efficiency of network resource allocation, both on the device and network.

Join the Web & Networks Interest Group.

This proposed charter is available on GitHub. Feel free to raise issues.

Charter Status See the group status page and detailed change history.
Start date [dd monthname yyyy] (date of the "Call for Participation", when the charter is approved)
End date CfP + 2 years
Chairs Dan Druta (AT&T); Sudeep Divakaran (Intel); Song Xu (China Mobile)
Team Contacts (0.05 FTE)
Meeting Schedule Teleconferences: A regular teleconference will be held, at least quarterly, with additional calls as required. Task Forces may have separate calls that will not overlap with each other.
Face-to-face: we will meet during the W3C's annual Technical Plenary week; additional face-to-face meetings may be scheduled by consent of the participants, usually no more than 1 per year.

Motivation and Background

New trends are seen in network traffic patterns due to emerging new use-cases that leverage computing resources across device, edge, and cloud that are shaping the focus areas for the Interest Group charter. These trends are leading indicators of the types of next generation applications. This also entail new dependencies and challenges to meet expectations for quality of experience and efficient usage of networking and computing resources.

A few such trends are highlighted below:

Scope

The Web & Networks Interest Group's scope spans Web and Networking technologies that can enhance the quality of experience of web applications, by exposing Web APIs that consider factors such as network performance, device capabilities (e.g. client devices, edge or cloud) for improved distributed compute and data transfer latencies, while preserving security and privacy requirements.

The scope of the group encompasses both wired and wireless networks.

Topics and areas that are in-scope for the Interest Group include:

Among those, the primary focus of the group is expected to be on discovering and defining standardization items on the following topics on:

The tasks that the Interest Group will undertake include:

The Interest Group also provides use cases and requirements to guide other groups at W3C.

Out of Scope

The technical development of standards is not in scope for the Interest Group. Technical specification discussions are expected to take place within the appropriate W3C groups if such a group exists, or within a dedicated Community Group when incubation is needed.

Success Criteria

The Interest Group will have succeeded if it can achieve the following:

  • Participation from various stakeholder communities, including browser vendors, media professionals, cloud providers, hardware and software developers, telecommunications companies, cable operators, application developers, regulators, and users.
  • Members of the Interest Group join relevant W3C Groups and drive the development of work items.
  • Engagement and coordination with other organizations in the Telecommunications, Edge Computing, Media, Security and Internet industries to recommend and coordinate technical standards development and promote adherence to W3C and/or other standards.

Deliverables

Updated document status is available on the group publication status page.

Normative Specifications

The Interest Group will not deliver any normative specifications.

Other Deliverables

Other non-normative documents may be created such as:

  • Primer or Best Practice documents to support web developers when designing applications.

As of the day of chartering, the Web and Networks Interest Group is working on the following document:

Timeline

The IG will, during its lifetime, undertake different activities that may proceed in parallel. This will include presentations by external Guest speakers or IG members (at least once per quarter) on upcoming technologies in Wireless and Wired Telecommunication Standards and new trends in Use-cases.

  • Identify and define requirements for the discovery and capability description of network nodes used to offload web based workloads to the edge. Findings, analysis and requirements document with Q3 2024 delivery.
  • Organize a W3C Workshop in H2 2025 to consolidate new use-cases, requirements and respective cost-benefit analysis, and document outcome in a Whitepaper.

Coordination

For all deliverables, this Interest Group will seek horizontal review for accessibility, internationalization, performance, privacy, and security with the relevant Working and Interest Groups, and with the TAG. Invitation for review must be issued during each major document transition, including FPWD and IG Note. The Interest Group is encouraged to engage collaboratively with the horizontal review groups throughout the development of each deliverable. The Interest Group is encouraged to proactively notify the horizontal review groups when major changes occur in its technical reports following a review.

Each Note or transmission of proposed work should contain a section detailing all known security and privacy implications for implementers, Web authors, and end users as well as recommendations for mitigations. There should be a clear description of the residual risk to the user or operator of that protocol after threat mitigation has been deployed.

This Interest Group expects to follow the TAG Web Platform Design Principles.

Potential technical coordination and evaluation with the following Groups will be made, per the W3C Process Document. This is not an exhaustive list and new collaborations with W3C Groups or external groups may be included as appropriate.

W3C Groups

Web of Things Interest Group
Web of Things depends on networking technologies on the edge and in the cloud when exposing interactions between Things, which can also include Edge devices. The Web & Networks IG should coordinate with Web of Things IG to ensure future work considers networking parameters that impact communication and performance in both IoT and edge compute offload like use-cases. The group should also evaluate extending Thing Description for Edge Compute Devices.
Media and Entertainment Interest Group
The Media and Entertainment Interest Group's scope covers Web technologies used in the end-to-end pipeline — including capture, production, distribution and consumption — of continuous media and their associated technologies such as timed text.
Devices and Sensors Working Group and Web Incubator Community Group
The Devices and Sensors Working Group (DAS WG) defines client-side APIs that enable the development of Web Applications that interact with device hardware and sensors. The Generic Sensor API defines a framework for exposing sensor data to the web platform in a consistent way. Sensors produce high frequency data that sets low latency requirements for delivery over the network.
Web Performance Working Group
The Web Performance Working Group's scope of work includes user agent features and APIs to observe and improve aspects of application performance, such as measuring network and rendering performance, responsiveness and interactivity, memory and CPU use, application failures, and similar APIs and infrastructure to enable measurement and delivery of better user experience. The Web & Networks IG will discuss ways to improve application performance under varying network conditions or new content delivery infrastructures (e.g. Edge Computing).
Distributed Tracing Working Group
The Distributed Tracing Working Group defines standards for interoperability between tracing tools to enable propagation and correlation of tracing data across different implementations. The Web & Networks IG will coordinate with this group on topics around standardizing trace formats for potential network emulation browser tools.
Web Real-Time Communications Working Group
The Web Real-Time Communications Working Group works on the WebRTC Next Version (WebRTC-NV). The Web & Networks IG should coordinate with this group to ensure the next version use cases can be implemented efficiently considering requirements on the networks such as exchange of large files without disruption to audio/video sessions, maintain a long-term connection and seek to minimize power consumption. Secondarily, explore implications of the new transport protocols such as the QUIC.
WebTransport Working Group
The WebTransport Working Group develops APIs that enable data transfer between browsers and servers with support for multiple streams, unidirectional streams, out-of-order delivery, variable reliability and pluggable protocols.
Web Machine Learning Working Group
The Web Machine Learning Working Group develops an API for machine learning inference in the browser. The Web & Networks IG should coordinate with this group to explore on how to load balance computing between cloud-based and client-side machine learning using network hints including bandwidth and latency, radio power consumption, and available computing power and battery on the client.
Automotive Working Group
The automotive segment is leveraging network connectivity to Edge and Cloud services for its in-vehicle services and autonomous driving solutions. The Web & Networks IG will engage with Automotive WG to explore new use-cases in the areas of wireless networking and edge computing in the automotive sector.
Decentralized Identifier Working Group
The Decentralized Identifier Working Group scope is to standardize the DID URI scheme, the data model and syntax of DID Documents. For the networking and distributed edge computing use-cases analyzed within the Web & Networks IG, the IG will coordinate with DID WG to explore the potential of DID and suitable solutions to address the use-case requirements.
Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group
The Web & Network Interest Group will seek guidance from the APA Working Group to ensure the accessibility of protocol and interactions of possible technical solutions be taken into account early in their design process.

External Organizations

3GPP
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) unites telecommunications standards development organizations (ARIB, ATIS, CCSA, ETSI, TSDSI, TTA, TTC), known as “Organizational Partners” and provides their members with a stable environment to produce the Reports and Specifications that define 3GPP technologies.
ARIB
The Association of Radio Industries and Businesses is aimed to conduct investigation, research & development and consultation of utilization of radio waves from the view of developing radio industries, and to promote realization and popularization of new radio systems in the field of telecommunications and broadcasting.
ETSI
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute produces globally-applicable standards for Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), including fixed, mobile, radio, converged, broadcast and internet technologies.
IEEE
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) develops a family of IEEE 802.11 standards that cover Wireless LAN technology.
IETF
Internet Engineering Task Force is an open-standards development organization which develops and promotes Internet standards, cooperating closely with the W3C and ISO/IEC standards bodies and dealing in particular with standards of the TCP/IP and Internet protocol suite. Relevant IETF work include e.g. HTTP Client Hints for proactive content negotiation.
GSMA
The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, uniting more than 750 operators with over 350 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset and device makers, software companies, equipment providers and internet companies, as well as organisations in adjacent industry sectors.
ITU-T
ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector is the part of the UN agency ITU that defines elements in information and communication technologies infrastructure. Their work includes Multimedia Application Framework for IPTV services. For example, H.762: Lightweight interactive multimedia framework for IPTV services (LIME) gives a subset of HTML, CSS and ECMAScript for use in IPTV terminals.
Metaverse Standards Forum
Metaverse Standards Forum is a venue for cooperation between standards organizations and companies to foster the development of interoperability standards for an open and inclusive metaverse, and accelerate their development and deployment.
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 is in charge of the development of standards for coded representation of digital audio, video and related data.

Participation

To be successful, this Interest Group is expected to have 6 or more active participants for its duration, including representatives from the key stakeholders identified above. The Chairs and Task Force leaders are expected to contribute half of a working day per week towards the Interest Group. There is no minimum requirement for other Participants.

The group encourages questions, comments and issues on its public mailing lists and document repositories, as described in Communication.

The group also welcomes non-Members to contribute technical submissions for consideration upon their agreement to the terms of the W3C Patent Policy.

Participants in the group are required (by the W3C Process) to follow the W3C Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

Communication

Technical discussions for this Interest Group are conducted in public: the meeting minutes from teleconference and face-to-face meetings will be archived for public review, and technical discussions and issue tracking will be conducted in a manner that can be both read and written to by the general public. Drafts of its documents will be developed in public repositories and may permit direct public contribution requests. The meetings themselves are not open to public participation, however.

Information about the group (including details about deliverables, issues, actions, status, participants, and meetings) is available from the Interest Group home page.

Most Interest Group teleconferences will focus on discussion of particular specifications, and will be conducted on an as-needed basis.

This group primarily conducts its technical work on the public mailing list public-networks-ig@w3.org (archive) and on GitHub issues. The public is invited to review, discuss and contribute to this work.

The group may use a Member-confidential mailing list for administrative purposes and, at the discretion of the Chairs and members of the group, for member-only discussions in special cases when a participant requests such a discussion.

Decision Policy

This group will seek to make decisions through consensus and due process, per the W3C Process Document (section 5.2.1, Consensus). Typically, an editor or other participant makes an initial proposal, which is then refined in discussion with members of the group and other reviewers, and consensus emerges with little formal voting being required.

However, if a decision is necessary for timely progress and consensus is not achieved after careful consideration of the range of views presented, the Chairs may call for a group vote and record a decision along with any objections.

To afford asynchronous decisions and organizational deliberation, any resolution (including publication decisions) taken in a face-to-face meeting or teleconference will be considered provisional. A call for consensus (CfC) will be issued for all resolutions (for example, via email and/or web-based survey), with a response period from one week to 10 working days, depending on the chair's evaluation of the group consensus on the issue. If no objections are raised on the mailing list by the end of the response period, the resolution will be considered to have consensus as a resolution of the Interest Group.

All decisions made by the group should be considered resolved unless and until new information becomes available or unless reopened at the discretion of the Chairs.

This charter is written in accordance with the W3C Process Document (Section 5.2.3, Deciding by Vote) and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

Patent Disclosures

The Interest Group provides an opportunity to share perspectives on the topic addressed by this charter. W3C reminds Interest Group participants of their obligation to comply with patent disclosure obligations as set out in Section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. While the Interest Group does not produce Recommendation-track documents, when Interest Group participants review Recommendation-track specifications from Working Groups, the patent disclosure obligations do apply. For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

Licensing

This Interest Group will use the W3C Software and Document license for all its deliverables.

About this Charter

This charter has been created according to section 3.4 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

Charter History

The following table lists details of all changes from the initial charter, per the W3C Process Document (section 4.3, Advisory Committee Review of a Charter):

Charter Period Start Date End Date Changes
Initial Charter 2019-05-15 2020-12-31 First charter
Charter Extension 30 April 2021 Needed to finalize new charter incorporating TPAC 2020 feedback
New Charter 2021-04-08 2023-04-30
  • Updated scope based on group's workstreams around distributed compute linked use-cases
  • Included study of network hints to applications as a dedicated topic in the scope section, based on group’s current activities
  • Updated scope of web metrics identification and evaluation topic to include privacy analysis
  • Updated the list of tasks to include collaboration with specific W3C groups interested to leverage edge compute and networking elements like network information, diagnostic APIs and tools for their use-cases
  • Expanded the primary deliverables by splitting them into three key items – new use-cases, requirements and gap-analysis
Charter Extension 2023-04-27 2023-10-31 Charter extended
Recharter Proposal 2023-11-01 2025-10-31
  • Updated mission statement to include exploration of solutions to improve network resource allocation and efficiency, and leveraging of new technologies like edge computing
  • Added Background section
  • Under Scope section, included Client-Edge-Cloud Coordination as a new topic
  • Added two study tasks around trust model and network resource utilization in Scope section