Web & Networks Interest Group Charter

This charter has been replaced by a newer version.

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

Join the Web & Networks Interest Group.

Start date 8 April 2021
End date 31 December 2023
Chairs Dan Druta (AT&T); Sudeep Divakaran (Intel); Song Xu (China Mobile)
Team Contacts Dominique Hazael-Massieux (0.1 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.

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 optimal distributed compute and data transfer latencies, and by enhancing network-profiling and diagnostics browser developer tools, 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 finding standardization items on the following topics:

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, Media and Internet industries to recommend and coordinate technical standards development and promote adherence to W3C and/or other standards.

Deliverables

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.

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.

  • Document list of use-cases that can benefit from Network Information and corresponding requirements. Deliver a first draft in Q1 2022.
  • Evaluate Network Browser Developer Tools extensions for web application testing. Depending on interest seen and proposals gathered, document a first draft by Q1 2022.
  • 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 Q2 2022 delivery.
  • Organize a W3C Workshop in H2 2022 to consolidate new use-cases, requirements and respective cost-benefit analysis, and document outcome in a Whitepaper.

Coordination

For all Notes or other 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.

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.

Additional technical coordination with the following Groups will be made, per the W3C Process Document:

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 performance in 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. Network Information API incubation enables web applications to access information about the network connection in use by the device and Priority Hints incubation provide developers with the control to indicate a resource's relative importance to the browser. The Web & Networks IG can propose new features and enhancements for these APIs. 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.
Machine Learning for the Web Community Group
The Machine Learning for the Web Community Group incubates 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.
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. Some 802.11 features are surfaces through Network Information API including estimated max downlink speeds of various 802.11 generations. Other possible parameters for consideration include e.g. backhaul congestion and network switching time.
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.
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 on a public repository 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 3.3). 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 or the Director.

This charter is written in accordance with the W3C Process Document (Section 3.4, Votes) 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 5.2 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 5.2.3):

Charter Period Start Date End Date Changes
Initial Charter 2019-05-15 2020-12-31 First charter
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
Charter Extension 2023-11-07 2023-12-31 Charter extended to accommodate the AC review period for a new charter (see proposed charter).