Network Technology Workshop ’98

In 1993, the Internet Society organized a training workshop in conjunction with its INET’93 meeting in San Francisco. The aims of the workshop were to assist countries to connect to the Internet and to extend the Internet in these countries, to learn how to obtain and supply services on the net, and to manage their own national networks to ensure growth and sustainability. This workshop, and the ones that have followed annually, have been an overwhelming success, training over 1,200 students from almost every developing country.

The sixth annual Network Technology Workshop For Countries In The Early Stages Of Internetworking, as the workshop is formally called, was held on July 12-19, 1998, preceding the INET’98 meeting. For the first time, the workshop was held at two sites. In addition to the site of INET’98, Geneva, Switzerland, a parallel workshop was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Geneva workshop brought together 162 students from 70 countries, and a training and support staff of 40 from 16 countries. In all, 79 countries were represented. The Rio de Janeiro workshop trained an additional 114 Latin American and Caribbean students in networking technologies, including a unique course aimed specifically at librarians. Following this very successful workshop, half of the 24 instructors flew to Geneva to participate in the INET’98 meeting, joining all of the students and instructors from the Geneva workshop. One of the measures of our success is that about one quarter of the instructors were former students of the workshop program. All training staff were volunteers who donated their time.

Traditionally, the workshops are held exclusively in English. In 1996 and again this year, several courses were conducted in French, making them more accessible to French-speaking students, particularly those from West Africa. This year, 29% of the Geneva students participated in the French courses. The Rio workshop was held primarily in Spanish, with additional support for Portuguese-speaking students.

The student geographic distribution at the Geneva workshop tells us a lot about the state of Internet expertise around the world.

It is clear that there is a large, relatively untapped market in French-speaking Africa. This need is increasingly being met by regional workshops held closer to the students' home countries. Throughout the rest of the world, distribution is consistent with recent years, implying that the workshops are continuing to meet a need in these regions. Although some areas identified above are "maturing", there are still sub-areas which need additional help. For instance, parts of the Former Soviet Union are well advanced, but many of the eastern republics still need abundant training. Based on discussions with students and others active in these regions, future workshops will need to target these regions to make sure that our announcements and applications receive wide-spread distribution.

The Geneva training courses consist of six days of intense classroom and laboratory activity. This year, the four English courses (called tracks) were:

Host-based Internetworking Technology (Track Leader: Brian Candler)

TCP/IP based services using PC-based UNIX hosts including gatewaying to the international Internet; transitioning a network from older technologies to TCP/IP based services; providing TCP/IP services to end users (typically DOS/Windows/Macintosh based) including mail and news services.

Backbone Internetworking Technology (Track Leader: Alan Barrett)

Techniques for design, set-up, and operation of a metropolitan, regional, or national TCP/IP dedicated backbone network. Detailed knowledge of routing, network troubleshooting, routing protocols, domain name system, NIC name and address co-ordination.

Network Navigation and Services (Track Leader: Jill Foster)

How to set up and design quality Internet Information services including Web servers and clients, search services, security issues, legal and ethical issues, National infrastructure issues, setting up and maintaining quality information services, special problems with servers at the end of slow links, caching strategies and mirroring, communication services and HTML authoring as well sessions on how to support and train users and providers of information.

National Network Management (Track Leader: Geoff Huston)

Management of a public Internet network on a national scale, including areas of operational and policy management commonly found with Internet development.

The French workshop, organised by Jacques Guidon, was comprised of two tracks:

Campus/Enterprise Network Management (Track Leader: Alain Durand)

Design and operation of TCP/IP networks including basic TCP/IP principles, dial-up networking, routing, DNS, e-mail, UUCP, IPv6 and WindowNT-based servers.

Web Site Creation and Management (Track Leader: Bruno Mannoni)

How to set and design Internet information services. Topics include Internet architecture, Web server and data structures, Java, HTML, security and graphic design.

The first three English tracks and both French tracks provide extensive hands-on exercises. A workroom with 30 PCs was also provided to give the students Internet access in the evenings. The equipment for all labs and their associated infrastructure included 150 workstations, 40 routers, 55 hubs, several ethernet switches, terminal servers, a telephone PBX, several kilometers of CAT5 and telephone cable as well as a host of other specialised equipment. Internet access was via an OC3 (155Mbps) fibre optics connection. All Geneva workshops were held at the Cité Universitaire de Genčve, a student residence associated with the Université de Genčve. Local support for the workshop was provided by a number of organizations including the Université de Genčve and CERN.

The Rio workshop, organized by Florencio Utreras, were held at La Universidad Federal de Rio de Janeiro – Núcleo de Computación Electrónica. For tracks were conducted:

Network Technology

Network Information Systems

Network and Information Systems Policy

Internet Technology for Librarians

The workshop operates on many levels. Clearly the prime purpose is to train the participants in various aspects of internetworking. The daily classes and labs serve this end, and it was not unusual to find many students and instructors working until midnight many evenings. Each track provides their students with several hundred pages of notes on paper. Moreover, the notes for all tracks plus a large quantity of public domain software were compiled onto a master CD at the end of the week of classes. Making the documentation for all tracks (about 2500 pages) available allows each student to benefit from the tracks they could not attend while at the workshop. The software (about 30 systems and compilations) is generally public domain software or upgrades that are theoretically available on the Internet, but are not accessible to those in countries with low bandwidth. Copies were manufactured during the next few days, and all students left with a CD. Each student also receives about 10 books (largely donated by O’Reilly and Associates, this year supplemented by a donation from John Wiley & Sons). The CD and books have proven to be an extremely valuable part of the workshop, because they allow continued learning and knowledge sharing when the participants return home.

On another level, the students make contacts with people from within their own country, region and around the world. Such contacts are obviously valuable on a personal level. However they have also proven to be a catalyst to various regional activities.

Lastly, all Geneva students attend the INET meeting that follows the workshop. The INET meeting exposes them to an entirely different but no less productive and exciting environment.

The workshop is not only technically challenging, it is expensive. Overall costs for the Geneva workshop were in the order of US$700,000. Most students cannot afford to pay the full cost of the workshop and travel, so many scholarships are awarded. This year’s workshops were made possible thanks to the financial contributions of the Internet Society, SWITCH, the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC), NATO, the infoDev Program of the World Bank, the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), United Nations Development Programme, US State Department, France Telecom, Agence de la Francophonie, the Governments of France, Canada and Quebec, Organization of American States (OAS), Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), UNESCO, Embratel, 3Com, Open Society Institute, the Japan Internet Association, and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation as well as the generous donations-in-kind of O’Reilly and Associates, Cisco Systems, BSDI, John Wiley & Sons, Newbridge Networks., Anixter, Walnut Creek CDROM, 3Com, Sun Microsystems, Livingston Enterprises, and many others.

In total, 276 professionals from 81 countries were trained at this year’s workshops. Of these, 137 were trained in core network infrastructure technologies, 99 in network services, and 33 in network management. Although one cannot immediately assess the impact that these people will have on their national networks and related facilities, experiences from past years has shown that many of the participants will be key players in local networking. Perhaps more important, many will teach the skills they acquired to others within their country and region. This multiplying factor is key to the spread of networking technologies in developing countries. Workshop management will be performing follow-up surveys with all attendees both to evaluate the success of training and to understand how to further adapt the workshops in the future. When selecting candidates for this workshop, it is difficult to identify those with "leadership" qualities. However, at the workshop itself, they often easily stand out. In past years, such students have proven to be valuable contacts in their region, and we plan to use this resource to ensure that the workshops continue to best serve the needs of those in developing regions.

Although only anecdotal evidence, it is interesting to see how many former workshop students now attend INET meetings, often presenting formal papers at the meeting. From discussions with them, it is clear that the workshop provided a major boost allowing them to participate completely in national and international networking. In 1998, for the first time we organised a second, parallel workshop. The Spanish workshop in Rio de Janeiro, run concurrently with the English and French workshops in Geneva, was by all measures and accounts, this a great success and it will be used as a model for future Internet Society decentralised training programs.

Alan Greenberg
October 12, 1998

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