Education 

ISOC Sponsored Events

Events in 2003

AfNOG 2003
43 participants from 18 different African countries attended the five-day training workshop held in Kampala, Uganda, June 8-13, 2003, and 84 attended the subsequent AfNOG and AfriNIC meetings.

The workshops were based on past successful AfNOG and INET training workshops with both English and French sessions covering the same material with equivalent depth and scope in three tracks. This achieved the goal of eliminating the effects of language barriers in technical expertise. AfNOG 2003 also saw the introduction of a new workshop on ccTLD distributed operations workshop.

This workshop built upon the experiences of the previous AfNOG workshops held in Cape Town, Accra, Lome and the INET workshops held during 1993-2000 at eight locations around the world.

The goals of the workshop were:

1. To train a critical mass of trainers and professionals in network infrastructure and services to be able to support an extension of Internet-related activities within the African countries represented.
2. To identify and share individual and institutional contacts as well as information sources that will assist the process of national development, using international Internet connections.
3. To build robust professional linkages between all participants in the programs so that the mentor-student and colleague-colleague relationships formed during the workshop and conferences will remain strong and of continuing usefulness well beyond the workshop and conference.
4. To increase the level of co-operation among existing projects and activities for establishing public data networks in Africa.
5. To train people and groups of people who will return to their country and region and who will teach others what they have learned at the workshop.

The workshop included two instructional tracks:

Track 1. Scalable Internet Services

This track was intended for technical staff who provide mail, file, web, and other TCP/IP based services to local and/or dial-up end users. Subjects covered included large-scale provision of UNIX-based TCP/IP services such as DNS (Domain Name Service) , SMTP mail exchange, POP mail delivery, Mailing lists, HTTP web service and Security.

Track 2. Scalable Network Infrastructure

This track was intended for technical staff operating a wide area TCP/IP network with international and/or multi-provider connectivity.

It supported those involved in the establishment and/or operation of a basic national network infrastructure in the country. Subjects: covered included the configuration and operation of larger scale backbones, including: Basic routing, OSPF routing, BGP routing (limited), Management of router configuration, NOC (Network Operation Center), Exchange points between networks and Security.

Track 2 was presented in both English and in French.

WALC 2003
185 participants from 16 countries attended the 6th Latin American and Caribbean Networking Technologies Workshop was held in Mérida, Venezuela, October 20-24, 2003. It was jointly organized by the Latin-American Networking School Foundation (ESLARED) in conjunction with the Universidad de Los Andes (ULA), National Center on Information Technology in Venezuela (CNTI), the Latin American and the Caribbean Forum of Networks (ENRED) and the Internet Society (ISOC). Six concurrent conference tracks focused on:

• Networking Technologies. Providing participants with the tools and techniques required to design, build, maintain and upgrade computer networks connected to the Internet. The content included: Basic IP Routing, NIS, DNS, LDAP, Virtual Private Networks, Network Security Basics, Comparison of Transmission, Technologies. The first Mile, Structured Cabling, Wireless Data Transmission. Satellite Transmission, WAN and MAN Technologies, IP Telephony.
• Information Services in Internet, Extranets and Intranets. Presented participants with a current and technically advanced view of the state of the art on the implementation of information services on the Internet. Content included: TCP/IP, Technological Trends regarding WEB services, Standards Evolution, Review of HTML, Desired features of a high quality service, Web Server Configuration, Secure Transactions, Configuration of Web Servers for Commercial Transactions, CGI Programming, Java Technology Fundamentals, Servlets, JDBC, Web based Database Access.
• Content Development in Latin America. The goal of this track was to assist the content developers in the region with the required tools to offer high quality materials in Spanish. The workshop addressed the needs of journalists, communicators, librarians, documentalists and other professionals who develop contents for the Internet or coordinate teams devoted to this task.
• Advanced Routing Techniques. Trained participants to install and maintain routers that guarantee high performance in nation wide computer networks. Content included: Leveling, Route exchange (Peering Vs Transit), BGP, IP Multicast, IP Telephony, QoS, IPv6, NAT.
• e-Learning. This track covered the techniques to be mastered for the effective organization and development of on-line teaching instruments using ICT. Both the technological and pedagogical viewpoints were considered. Content included: e-learning technological platforms, Learning Management Systems, Overview of Existing tools, New Open Source Tools, Instructional Technology, Instructional Design, Methodology and Objects of Learning
• Network Security. Provided a review of the theoretical and practical security fundamentals for distributed systems, with emphasis on experimental techniques to secure, monitor and maintain an information system protected from security threats. Content included: Introduction to computer networks security, Fundamentamental Concepts: Authentication, Integrity, Confidentiality, Availability, Security Policy Design: ISO 17799, Introduction to Cryptography, · Substitution and Transposition.

AIT Multicast Workshop
Held by the Asian Institute of Technology in Pathumtani, Thailand (18­20 May 2003), this workshop aimed at training engineers from education and research networks in the Asia/Pacific region to enable streaming of educational contents through the regional academic networks. Funding was provided for the Network Startup Resource Centre (NSRC) to pay costs associated with shipping routing equipment to a multicast workshop at the Internetworking Research Laboratory of the Asian Institute of Technology. Workshop participants were network engineers from education and research networks in the Asia-Pacific region. Students learned to engineer multicast into their networks and successfully facilitated multicast throughout the Thai research network. The curriculum was modeled on a multicast workshop taught at the University of Oregon for the Internet2 community in June 2002.

Small Grants Programs

More info:
http://web.idrc.ca/en/ev-9663-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
http://programafrida.net/en/presentation.html
www.isoc.org/isoc/media/releases/040323pr.shtml