Jon Brewer - isif.asia

Networking the Pacific

This talk introduces an ISIF-funded study exploring the performance and interconnectivity of networks in the Pacific Islands. It covers a brief history of submarine cable and satellite networks servicing the Pacific, then evaluates network transit arrangements against best possible performance for a few selected networks. Evaluation methodologies including network probes will be discussed, and particular attention will be paid to Guam - a major submarine cable hub with surprisingly poor connectivity to the world.

Biography

Jonathan is recovering network operator. Today he is a consulting engineer to a wide variety of organisations in the Asia Pacific region. He has researched and written about dynamic spectrum and TV whitespace, Internet of Things technologies, and Internet Affordability. Since 2013 he has worked with the Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) and the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) on training and engineering assistance programs in dynamic spectrum, wireless sensor networks, network monitoring and management, network security, and campus network design.

Roland Dobbins - Arbor Networks

Your Bitcoins or Your Site:  An Analysis of the DDoS for Bitcoins (DD4BC) DDoS Extortion Campaign

In this presentation, we will discuss details of the ongoing DDoS for Bitcoins (DD4BC) DDoS extortion campaign, which has targeted multiple organizations in Australia and New Zealand, as well as in North America and Europe. The attack methodologies, evolution of the attack campaign, and discussion of the nature of the attacker(s) will be covered, along with a discussion of successful DDoS mitigation techniques which have proven effective against these attacks.

Biography

Roland Dobbins has 30 years of operational experience in the serviceprovider (SP) and large enterprise arenas, designing, deploying,operating, securing, maintaining, troubleshooting, and defending many ofthe highest-visibility networks in the world. He is a recognized industryleader in the fields of operational security (opsec) and networktelemetry, and has an extensive background in security product/featureinnovation, devising operational security requirements for networkinfrastructure devices, and protocol design.

His focus is on extending the availability, scalability, and security ofthe network infrastructure and the applications/services it enables, withan emphasis on flexible and resilient global service deliverycapabilities.

George Fong & Paul Brooks - Internet Australia

Data Retention - who, what, how, and when.

The new Data Retention laws commenced on 13th April, and ISPs have until 13th October to become compliant with the new requirements. ISPs may apply for exemptions and extensions by submitting a DRIP – Data Retention Implementation Plan – but this must be submitted before 13th August to ensure it can be approved before the laws “go live”.

There is much fear, uncertainty, doubt and confusion over the new obligations, generating many hours of discussion and analysis on the AusNOG list and elsewhere.

A group of ISPs and carriers through Internet Australia and Comms Alliance have been working with the Attorney General’s Department to clarify areas of uncertainty and create (hopefully) easy-to- understand guidelines and explanations to help ISPs work out what they do and don’t need to do. Working with an ISP SIG within Internet Australia, we’ve tried to generate our own FAQ set as well as work with AGD to refine theirs.

In this session we’ll go through and summarise the guidance to help you understand:

• Who is captured by the new requirements, and what sort of providers are not
• What services you need to keep data for, and which you do not
• What data you need to keep, what you don’t need to keep
• AGDs expectations around data security and encryption
• Obligations of wholesalers vs retailers vs resellers – who needs to do what
• The process to apply for exemptions and extensions.

and answer questions from the floor as best we can, in language that doesn’t need a lawyer to interpret.

Biography

George Fong is CEO and owner of Lateral Plains, an ISP and ICT service provider based in Ballarat, and is President of Internet Australia. Paul Brooks is a consulting engineer and broadband expert and is Vice President of Internet Australia. George, Paul and Internet Australia generally has a proud history of injecting rational fact—based analysis and education with government and the user community on behalf of the ISP industry into regulatory issues such as Internet content filtering, and most recently data retention, ‘Section 313’ parliamentary enquiries and copyright issues.

Phillip Grasso-Nguyen - Google

Are Network Engineers relevant in SDN world? Google's path to Network Systems Engineers

How relevant is traditional network engineering skills in a world moving to software defined networking. This presentation covers the evolution of the network engineer in Google to what we call a Network Systems Engineers. Transposing the traditional skills used to operate autonomous network devices to writing and managing large scale Network Systems. The presentation will go through lessons of this transformation; from technical challenges of equipment vendors to organisational institutional issues and people matters.

Biography

Phillip Grasso-Nguyen, head of Network Ops Software & Automation and Networking in Australia.

Spent the last 18 Years challenging the status quo in telecommunications and networking industry.

The past 8 years building up Google Australia Networking team in Engineering, Operations, software and automation to be a powerhouse networking site within Google.

Prior to Google, Phillip worked for Telstra, NTT Australia, Corvil in Europe. Magnadata (firstcorporate ISP in Australia).

Attained degrees in computer science and business from UTS, UNSW, USYD.

Raphael Ho - Equinix

Green Data Centre Techniques

In the new information age, more and more of our lives are conducted onthe Internet. This means more servers, more data centers, and more powerrequired to support the requirements. While there are inherentenvironmental benefits in an on-line lifestyle (e.g. Shopping via Internetprobably has a lower carbon footprint than driving to the mall), the powerrequirement and environmental impact has shifted to data centre operators.

This presentation shows some of the techniques being used at Equinix andother data centre operators to become more green.

Biography

Raphael Ho is the Senior Director for Network Engineering and Operationsfor Equinix Asia, and responsible for the development of the networkservices across the Asia Pacific region, including the Equinix InternetExchange platform.

Prior to joining Equinix, Mr. Ho served as the Director for NOC TechnicalSupport of Asia Netcom, supporting the Transmission, IP and Voiceplatforms. He has also served in various Engineering/Operations managementpositions in global organizations such as Pihana Pacific, Level 3Communications and Global One in Singapore, US and the UK.

Mr. Ho graduated from Imperial College, London and holds a Bachelor ofEngineering degree in Computing.

Jamie Horrell - NZRS

Mapping New Zealand’s Broadband Infrastructure

NZRS is the technical operator of the .nz namespace and maintain a research and Internet data function within the team.

To support the research function and as an authoritative source of Internet data NZRS has worked on collecting, collating, creating and publishing geospatial data regarding b roadband provision in New Zealand.

The data is made available in four main ways:

• As publically accessible broadband finder and switcher service (to be released July 2015)
• As a data service for consumption either in web applications or traditional GIS software, via a series a web APIs.
• As vector query and raster query web APIs.
• As a raw data download.

The service has over 100 spatial telecommunications layers available, including fibre networks, ADSL coverage, cellular network coverage, radio high sites and wireless ISP coverage.

The data is used by policy makers and researchers in New Zealand and could potentially be made available for other uses.

Particular focus has been put into mapping smaller regional wireless ISPs and work has been into developing software the enable smaller providers to accurately map their own networks, using terrain based modelling. This tool is used both for quantifying existing coverage; creating usable GIS outputs for analysis and for planning of new networks.

The talk will cover:

• What broadband coverage is actually available
• How via some simple API calls it is possible for NZRS to determine broadband services available at New Zealand addresses.
• How the new National Broadband Map was developed and architected
• How the data service is used by professionals
• How data was acquired
• The open source radio propagation modelling software NZRS have developed to allow mapping of wireless networks
• Examples of analysis made possible by the data NZRS have available for reuse.

Biography

NZRS is a provider of critical Internet services, primarily the .nz register and DNS, and authoritative Internet data. NZRS is a wholly owned subsidiary of InternetNZ, the open membership society established in 1995 with a broad set of objects to maintain and extend the availability of the Internet and its associated technologies and applications in New Zealand.

Geoff Huston - APNIC

Testing Rolling Roots

Its been five years since the root of the DNS was signed using DNSSEC. The original intent was to perform a periodic roll of the key-signing-key (KSK) at regular intervals and it was originally envisaged to roll the KSK 5 years later, in 2015. This brings up a number of questions concerning the nature of the key roll and the sizes of the DNS responses that may be anticipated ruing the key roll. At APNIC we¹ve been helping out with this work, and our contribution has been in testing the resolvers we use to expose what DNS response sizes they can cope with, the behaviours seen in IPv4 and IPv6, the signing algorithms that are supported and the extent to which we use resolvers that are DNSSEC-aware.

Biography

Geoff Huston is the Chief Scientist at APNIC, the Regional Internet Registry for the Asia Pacific region. He works in areas of routing, IPv6 and transition, the DNS and measurement. Prior to this he served a 10 year sentence with Telstra, and before that he played with AARNet. He talks a bit, writes a bit, and speaks a bit, mostly about the Internet.

David Lambert - Brocade

Applications for externalized control planes

Network controllers provide an abstracted network control function, opening up the network forwarding plane to external applications that can add additional functionality beyond what is possible with the relatively static control plane features and protocols that networking engineers are currently bound by.

We will explore the externalized control plane architecture, some of the first controller facilitated applications as well as some of the possible future use cases.

Biography

David Lambert is a Principal Systems Engineer at Brocade, working within APAC with service providers on IP routing technologies including transition strategies to cloud and software networking. He is a veteran of SP core and edge infrastructure.

James Paussa - Facebook

ONE - One Network Engineer

At Facebook we only ever have a single network engineer operating the entire production network. This includes all troubleshooting, fault finding and firefighting. How do we do this? We have built a number of systems here, all by network engineers that allow us to detect, alert and mitigate faults fast, all while not a single human is involved. We strongly believe in automating ourselves out of a job so we can move onto new more interesting challenges. We’ll drive into some of the real problems we have faced in our network and reveal how some simple scripting allowed us to solve some major issues.

Michael Sallaway - Opengear

Tips, techniques and tools for remote monitoring (even when the networkis down)

As network engineers know, networks consist of more than a run of fibre between two points. There are many potential failure points (power, equipment, environmental issues, third parties, etc.) To improve reliability, all these points must be monitored continuously, with problems detected and corrected quickly. In some cases, infrastructure is unavailable at these monitoring points, or the points themselves may be geographically remote, which complicates fault detection and remediation. This talk will discuss monitoring techniques and OSS (Operational Support System) monitoring tools that Opengear uses for monitoring services and reliably providing remote access (often via cellular networks) to diagnose and attempt to repair any issues found. It will also discuss some common monitoring and remote access deployment issues, with suggested workarounds.

Biography

Michael Sallaway is a Senior Software Engineer at Opengear. He has worked with Open Source networking technologies since 2008, first at Snapgear/Secure Computing building UTM firewall appliances, and now at Opengear, building console servers and remote access gateways. In his spare time he has been known to wave solder PCBs in his kitchen for his elaborate Christmas lights display.

Rajiv Shah - BAE Systems Applied Intelligence

Big Data Beyond the Buzzword

CSPs hold a gold mine of customer and network data, which, with the right tools can be used to improve the network experience, as well as for customer value management.However, this presents the challenge of understanding and presenting this data to effectively utilise it, producing actual business benefit. This is a challenge that CSPs are increasingly failing to overcome.There are several reasons for this:Firstly, processing the vast quantities of data requires new tools (such as Hadoop), and new infrastructure and skills in this area are scarce.Secondly, the data itself is complex and few organisations have resources that understand the data and the tools available to analyse it.Thirdly, the ability to visualise, present and act on the data analysis is underdeveloped. In order to provide benefit, it is necessary to be able to translate analytic results into operational decision making that can improve network performance, reduce operational costs and/or increase revenue.Finally, many CSPs have not yet decided on their corporate posture to data analysis, with many having outdated privacy policies and internal processes.In this talk, we will discuss how these challenges can be addressed, and demonstrate the power of data and the insights that can be achieved when they are overcome.

Biography

Dr Rajiv Shah has more than 16 years’ experience in the technology industry, working with commercial and government sector customers to design and implement leading edge information intelligence solutions, turning information into actionable intelligence.Rajiv has worked with major telecommunications companies and Government organisations in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, as well as leading complex international engagements, providing technical and engineering leadership, solution architecture and design, and designing and implementing communications, data and security solutions for carrier grade networks.Rajiv started at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence in 1996 as a technical consultant. He has held several positions with the company across the UK, US and Australia including: Head of Operations, National Security business unit; Head of Delivery and Operations, Electronic Systems Group; Head of Communications, Data and Security Solutions; and Telecommunications Sector Lead, Asia Pacific.

Mark Smith

Why you should read RFCs and Internet Drafts (and what you need to know to do so)

Requests For Comments (RFCs) are the documents that describe the protocols that make the Internet work, published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Internet Drafts (IDs) are the documents that are submitted to or created by the IETF for possible publication as RFCs.

In this presentation, I will talk about why I think you should read both RFCs and Internet Drafts, and the background information you need to know to best understand RFCs and IDs.

IDs are freely and publicly published for review and comments. If you wish to participate in their review, there's a few things you should know about the IETF and its review and publication process, which I'll describe.

Biography

Mark joined the industry in the early 1990s. Initially starting out in desktop support, he quickly moved into Novell server administration. He subsequently became a Certified Novell Instructor for Comtech (now Dimension Data), and then a Systems Engineer when Comtech became a network integrator. He moved on to EDS Client Server Engineering, preparing solutions for the South Australian Government.

Mark moved into networking in 1998. Since then he has held positions involving support, deployment, product and network engineering roles for EDS, UUNet/Worldcom (now Verizon), Adam Internet, Internode and Nextgen Networks. While at Adam Internet, he lead the design and deployment of a new core network architecture to support Adam Internet's rapidly growing broadband customer base. At Internode, Mark worked on the development of Internode's production deployment of broadband IPv6. Most recently he held the position of IP Engineer at Nextgen Networks.

In his own time, Mark follows and participates in the IETF IPv6 maintenance (6man) and operations (v6ops) working groups. He is an acknowledged reviewer and contributor to over a dozen IPv6 related RFCs, and is the author of 6 IPv6 related Internet Drafts.

Elly Tawhai - APNIC

APNIC Update

This short presentation is designed to update the Australian network operations industry covering what is happening around the world with Internet resources. Included are current statistics on AS numbers, IPv4, and IPv6 address delegations, updates on Internet resource policies (such as implementation of recovered IPv4 address blocks), IPv4 markets and transfers, interface service improvement along with other recent APNIC news, and affects on the local industry.

Thomas Weible - Flexoptix

FFO - fracking fiber optic

LC plugs are not the only ones now that we have QSFP+. Should you use MPO or MTP. What about ST, LC, SC, E2000 or the new LC Uniboot plugs ? What are the compromises and benefits of each solution.Did you know that polarity in optical MPO matters ? And why can the polish of a plug cause headache during on-site installation.Thomas will give an overview of the connectors and fibre options in the datacentre now we have 40G und 100G as a standard. Especially for these parallel transmission applications you should consider to rethink your wiring if you don¹t want to get stuck in troubleshooting your links.Finally some practical examples of broken optical components after and during field installation ­ real cases which happen every day even in 2015 were fiber optic is commodity.

Biography

Thomas Weible has been part of the internet community for more than 8 years and has specialized in optical networking. In 2008 he co-founded Flexoptix - the maker of the flexbox. Thomas plays a lot with optical transceivers and knows their inwards, how to program and configure them. With this knowledge he drives the hard- and software development including the worldwide support for the community. He likes to share his knowledge and has been holding speeches around the globe since his university time. Thomas holds a master degree in computer science from James Cook University Townsville (AU) / University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt (DE).

David Wilde - AARNet

The Australian Wide-Area SDN Testbed

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is rapidly emerging as a technology with potential to improve network flexibility via software-based management and control. To date, development has been centred around data-centre and campus networks, and relatively little work has been done on the applicability of SDN to wide area and carrier networks.

A consortium of researchers from nine Universities and the CSIRO, led by UNSW, has been awarded a LIEF grant by the Australian Research Council to deploy SDN equipment within each of their labs. These sites are being interconnected by AARNet to create a national wide-area SDN testbed environment, with the potential to peer internationally with testbeds in the USA, Europe and elsewhere.

This testbed is helping us better understand the SDN ecosystem - Openflow-enabled hardware (Noviflow, Pica8, Corsa), controller software (Floodlight, Ryu, ONOS), application development APIs, and SDN applications themselves.Building this wide-area testbed is helping us learn the complexity, maturity, performance, and scalability aspects of carrier SDN deployment, as well as identify current gaps. The intended result is a growing store of knowledge and experience, to be shared with network operators who are potentially interested in exploring SDN solutions.

In this presentation, the architecture of the SDN testbed will be presented, along with examples of the planned research experiments and potential use-cases as they relate to the network operator community.

Biography

David Wilde joined AARNet, Australia's Academic and Research Network, in 2010, taking on the role of Network Architect in 2011.

His primary focus has been on developing the architecture and driving the rollout of the "AARNet4" project, upgrading AARNet's transmission and IP networks to 100Gbps capabilities. He is also responsible for planning AARNet's future technology roadmap, to ensure that AARNet rides at the forefront of technology in order to better support the R&E activities and services required by AARNet's customers and users across Australia.

David began his career in computer networks in the late 90s at the University of New South Wales, and has since worked in a variety of technical and managerial roles for telecommunications operators and service providers across Australia and Europe. Prior to joining AARNet he was founder and CTO of a boutique Cisco Certified network integrator in France.

David holds a B.E.(Hons) and a B.Sc. from Monash University, and has maintained his active CCIE certification since 2001.