138 lines
6.7 KiB
TeX
138 lines
6.7 KiB
TeX
\section{The Landscape}
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\label{sec:landscape}
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\subsection{Temporal dynamics}
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\label{sec:temporal}
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Figure~\ref{fig:temporal} shows monthly submission counts for the clean corpus.
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Activity is negligible through most of 2024 (mean 3.7 drafts/month over June
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2024--May 2025) and inflects sharply in late 2025: October 2025 jumps to 33
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drafts, and monthly counts since June 2025 average 38.8. The peak month is
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March 2026 with 106 drafts---roughly $35\times$ a typical 2024 month. We report
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this as a peak-to-baseline ratio rather than an ``average growth rate'': the
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distribution is dominated by a recent spike, not steady exponential growth. The
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final two months (April--May 2026) dip relative to the March peak; because
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drafts continue to be submitted and indexed, the tail of the curve should be
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read as provisional rather than as a downturn.
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\begin{figure}[h]
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\centering
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\begin{tikzpicture}
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\node[left,font=\scriptsize] at (-0.35,2.0) {\rotatebox{90}{Drafts/month}};
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\draw[gray!40] (-0.1,0.000) -- (11.60,0.000); \node[left,font=\scriptsize] at (-0.1,0.000) {0};
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\draw[gray!40] (-0.1,0.943) -- (11.60,0.943); \node[left,font=\scriptsize] at (-0.1,0.943) {25};
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\draw[gray!40] (-0.1,1.887) -- (11.60,1.887); \node[left,font=\scriptsize] at (-0.1,1.887) {50};
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\draw[gray!40] (-0.1,2.830) -- (11.60,2.830); \node[left,font=\scriptsize] at (-0.1,2.830) {75};
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\draw[gray!40] (-0.1,3.774) -- (11.60,3.774); \node[left,font=\scriptsize] at (-0.1,3.774) {100};
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\fill[blue!60!black] (0.00,0) rectangle (0.30,0.151);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (0.40,0) rectangle (0.70,0.075);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (0.80,0) rectangle (1.10,0.038);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (1.20,0) rectangle (1.50,0.189);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (1.60,0) rectangle (1.90,0.113);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (2.00,0) rectangle (2.30,0.038);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (2.40,0) rectangle (2.70,0.075);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (2.80,0) rectangle (3.10,0.038);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (3.20,0) rectangle (3.50,0.377);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (3.60,0) rectangle (3.90,0.038);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (4.00,0) rectangle (4.30,0.189);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (4.40,0) rectangle (4.70,0.113);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (4.80,0) rectangle (5.10,0.189);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (5.20,0) rectangle (5.50,0.038);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (5.60,0) rectangle (5.90,0.075);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (6.00,0) rectangle (6.30,0.264);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (6.40,0) rectangle (6.70,0.226);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (6.80,0) rectangle (7.10,0.151);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (7.20,0) rectangle (7.50,0.226);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (7.60,0) rectangle (7.90,0.226);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (8.00,0) rectangle (8.30,0.302);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (8.40,0) rectangle (8.70,1.245);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (8.80,0) rectangle (9.10,0.830);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (9.20,0) rectangle (9.50,0.415);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (9.60,0) rectangle (9.90,1.925);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (10.00,0) rectangle (10.30,2.491);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (10.40,0) rectangle (10.70,4.000);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (10.80,0) rectangle (11.10,2.943);
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\fill[blue!60!black] (11.20,0) rectangle (11.50,2.792);
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\node[below,font=\scriptsize] at (0.15,-0.05) {2024-01};
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\node[below,font=\scriptsize] at (2.55,-0.05) {2024-07};
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\node[below,font=\scriptsize] at (4.95,-0.05) {2025-01};
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\node[below,font=\scriptsize] at (7.35,-0.05) {2025-07};
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\node[below,font=\scriptsize] at (9.75,-0.05) {2026-01};
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\node[below,font=\scriptsize] at (11.35,-0.05) {2026-05};
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\end{tikzpicture}
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\caption{Monthly counts of AI/agent IETF Internet-Drafts, January 2024--May
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2026 ($n=524$). The April--May 2026 tail is provisional (indexing lag).}
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\label{fig:temporal}
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\end{figure}
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\subsection{Category distribution}
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\label{sec:categories}
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Table~\ref{tab:categories} gives the distribution of drafts by primary
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category. The field is concentrated in identity/authentication (141 drafts,
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$26.9\%$), agent-to-agent communication protocols (108, $20.6\%$), and
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autonomous network operations (64, $12.2\%$). The sparsest areas are
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human-agent interaction (5), the residual ``Other'' bucket (9), and model
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serving/inference (16); we report these descriptively and draw no normative
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conclusion about whether sparse areas \emph{ought} to receive more attention.
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Categories are not mutually exclusive: $92.9\%$ of drafts carry more than one
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category, reflecting genuine thematic overlap (e.g.\ a draft may concern both
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agent identity and authorization). We use the primary (first) category for the
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distribution.
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\begin{table}[h]
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\centering
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\begin{tabular}{lr}
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\toprule
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\textbf{Primary category} & \textbf{Drafts} \\
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\midrule
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Agent identity / authentication & 141 \\
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Agent-to-agent (A2A) protocols & 108 \\
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Autonomous network operations & 64 \\
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ML traffic management & 48 \\
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Data formats / interoperability & 44 \\
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Agent discovery / registration & 35 \\
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Policy / governance & 30 \\
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AI safety / alignment & 24 \\
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Model serving / inference & 16 \\
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Other AI/agent & 9 \\
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Human-agent interaction & 5 \\
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\midrule
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\textbf{Total} & \textbf{524} \\
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\bottomrule
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\end{tabular}
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\caption{Distribution of the clean IETF corpus by primary category.
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$92.9\%$ of drafts also carry one or more secondary categories.}
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\label{tab:categories}
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\end{table}
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\subsection{Authorship and working-group structure}
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\label{sec:authors}
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The corpus is authored by 619 distinct individuals and is \emph{not}
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concentrated: the ten most prolific authors together account for only $10.9\%$
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of drafts. The most active contributors---Bing Liu (22 drafts), Nan Geng (21),
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and Zhenbin Li (20)---form a cluster around autonomous network operations.
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The strongest structural signal is the maturity of the work. Of the 524 drafts,
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\textbf{456 ($87\%$) are individual submissions} not adopted by any IETF working
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group; only 28 distinct working groups appear across the remainder. The area is
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thus overwhelmingly \emph{pre-standardization}: a large volume of individual
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proposals competing for attention, with comparatively little that has cleared
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the bar of working-group adoption.
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\subsection{Semantic redundancy}
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\label{sec:redundancy}
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Pairwise cosine similarity over the 137{,}026 document pairs has a mean of
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$0.711$ (p90 $0.790$, p99 $0.850$, max $1.000$). We define a near-duplicate as a
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pair with cosine $>0.9$: there are 125 such pairs, and \textbf{170 drafts
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($32.4\%$) have at least one near-duplicate} in the corpus. The four pairs at
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cosine $\approx 1.0$ are legitimate---they are individual versus
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working-group-adopted versions of the same document (for example
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\texttt{draft-fv-rats-ear} and \texttt{draft-ietf-rats-ear})---rather than data
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artifacts. Combined with the dominance of individual submissions
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(Section~\ref{sec:authors}), the high redundancy is consistent with a young,
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crowded design space in which many authors propose overlapping solutions to the
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same problems before consolidation occurs.
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