ION Trinidad and Tobago

ION Trinidad and Tobago was hosted by Deploy360 in collaboration with the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU). The CTU celebrated 25 years of service to the Caribbean with an ICT Week with the theme “Celebrating our past; Committing to our future,” from 2-6 February 2015 in Port of Spain, Trinidad. ION Trinidad and Tobago was a critical part of committing to the future for the peoples of the Caribbean. The ION Conference was on Thursday, 5 February. ION Trinidad had generous support from Afilias .

ION Conferences bring network engineers and leading industry experts together to discuss emerging technologies including IPv6, DNSSEC, and Securing BGP, and TLS for Applications. Early adopters provide valuable insight into their own deployment experiences and bring participants up to speed on new standards emerging from the IETF.

ION lets network operators stay ahead of the curve to understand and deploy emerging Internet technologies, and presents a unique opportunity to discuss the future of the Internet with the people who help craft it. More than a simple lecture series, ION events provide hands-on interaction with our speakers so you walk away with the answers you need to deploy new standards and technologies on your own networks.

Events bring together the best and brightest from the Internet industry to learn about the latest news, ideas, and technologies in a relaxed and educational atmosphere.

Agenda and Presentations

TIMESCHEMA
1:30 PMOpening Remarks

Chris Grundemann (Internet Society)

Presentation
1:45 PMWelcome from the Internet Society Trinidad Chapter

The Internet Society’s Trinidad Chapter welcomes ION attendees with an introduction to the Internet Society and an overview of the Chapter’s efforts to promote the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people in Trinidad. The Chapter focuses on Internet connectivity and accessibility, helps local ICT professionals and companies get involved in the IETF, and advises the government on policy, Internet connectivity and broadband standards. Learn more about the Internet Society, the Chapter, and how you can get involved and join today.

Niran Beharry (Internet Society Trinidad and Tobago Chapter)
2:00 PMThe Business Case for DNSSEC

DNSSEC helps prevent attackers from subverting and modifying DNS messages and sending users to wrong (and potentially malicious) sites. So how can we get DNSSEC deployed on a large scale? We’ll discuss the business reasons for, and financial implications of, deploying DNSSEC, from staying ahead of the technological curve, to staying ahead of your competition, to keeping your customers satisfied and secure on the Internet. We’ll also examine some of the challenges operators have faced and the opportunities to address those challenges and move deployment forward.

Patrick Hosein (TTNIC)

Presentation
2:30 PMPanel: Routing Around Catastrophe – Securing BGP, Anti-spoofing, and More

We don’t often think about the Internet’s global routing system because, for the most part, it has *just worked* for us for years. However, there have been several instances where vulnerabilities in the security and resilience of that routing system have manifested themselves: from a 2008 incident that made YouTube temporarily unreachable around the globe, to multiple cases of Internet traffic deflection by some Chinese ISPs, to an April 2014 incident when an Indonesian network operator mistakenly claimed that it “owned” many of the world’s networks.

It can be difficult to incentivize network operators to act with the good of the whole Internet in mind, and the usefulness of security measures often depends on coordinated actions of many other parties. So how do we improve the resilience and security of the Internet’s underlying routing infrastructure? In this session, a panel of experts will address anti-spoofing, BCP 38, and BGP security efforts that can help secure the routing infrastructure. They will also consider the Internet Society’s new MANRS document that defines a compact and clear set of recommendations which, if deployed on a wide scale, could result in visible improvements to the security and resilience of the global routing system.

Moderator: Shernon Osepa (Internet Society). Panelists: Reynold Guerrier (GSIS); Marlon Raghunanan (University of the West Indies); Steve Spence (ArikTechs); Bevil Wooding (Packet Clearing House).
3:30 PMBREAK
3:45 PMBeyond the Tipping Point: Global Connectivity Three Years After World IPv6 Launch

June 2015 marks the 3rd anniversary of World IPv6 Launch, when thousands of Internet Service Providers, home networking equipment manufacturers, and web companies around the world came together to permanently enable IPv6 on their products and services. Where are we now on the path to full global IPv6 adoption? We’ll discuss the current state of IPv6 adoption, including statistics and lessons learned from and since World IPv6 Launch, and the next steps needed to move forward with IPv6 deployment.

Kevon Swift (LACNIC)

Presentation
4:15 PMIPv6 Success Stories– Network Operators Tell All!

In this session, we invite network operators to share their IPv6 success stories and lessons learned along the way that can help other managers of networks deploy IPv6. How did they do it? What technical, organizational, and political challenges did they face? Attendees will gain vital insight as network operators lay out the stages for IPv6 implementation—creating the business case for management buy-in, initiating a planning process, flipping the switch, and, finally, gathering measurements and proving success.

Moderator: Chris Grundemann (Internet Society). Panelists: Levin Cole (Columbus Communications Trinidad); Owen DeLong; Marvin Thomas (Digicel Trinidad & Tobago).

Levin Cole’s Opening Statement | Marvin Thomas’s Opening Slides
5:15 PMClosing Remarks

Chris Grundemann (Internet Society)

Presentation

At ION Trinidad and Tobago, we used Zoom Conferences to host remote participation (and one remote speaker) and webcast the event. This is the raw video from that Zoom Conference, broken up into two separate YouTube sessionsPre-Break Sessions and Post-Break Sessions.

Speakers

Niran Beharry, Lead Technologist at Proteus Technologies Limited, ISOC TT Board Member

Niran Beharry is the CEO and Lead Technologist at Proteus Technologies Limited. He helped create a company that specializes in developing dynamic perspectives by melding expertise in multiple technology fields, including Information Technology, Security, Industrial Design, Engineering, Medicine or Energy to create unique and holistic solutions for global clients.

Niran is a founding member of the Internet Society Trinidad and Tobago Chapter, as well as a member of the Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society, where he seeks to promote the evolution, and use of an open Internet for the benefit of all people in Trinidad and Tobago. He has done volunteer work under the UNESCO within the Caribbean and under various International Agencies in West and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Levin Cole, Network Infrastructure Engineer, Columbus Communications Trinidad Limited

Levin Cole is an Information Technology and Networking professional with over 10 years of experience in both Enterprise and Service provider environments. As a Network Infrastructure Engineer at Columbus Communications, he is responsible for the development of the Core Networks and providing Tier 4 & 5 support to the Southern Caribbean Region. He currently leads the technical IPv6 deployment across the Columbus Communications Caribbean business units. Previously, Levin was a Network Administrator at NCO Financial Systems, responsible for a multi-national Network of VoIP and remote application servers. Security and business continuity were of key focus in handling clients’ personal information.

As a technologist with a passion for IPv6, routing and network design as it relates to the Internet and telecommunications, Levin has consulted on a variety of solutions and successfully managed several projects involving complex large scale networking in areas such as BGPv6, IXPs (TTIX & GREX), MPLS VPN Metro Ethernet, CGN, and IPv6 dual stacking.

Throughout his career, Levin has been actively involved in various Internet organizations and technical forums, including LACNIC, CaribNOG, IPv6 Forum Grenada, and the Internet Society, where he was recently awarded an Internet Society Fellowship to the IETF in 2014. He holds number professional level certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, Juniper and Hurricane Electric IPv6 Sage, in addition to others. Levin obtained his B.Sc. in Computing and A.S. in Business from Andrews University.

Owen DeLong, Consultant

Owen DeLong is a consultant, an IPv6 expert and a member of the ARIN Advisory Council.

Owen brings more than 25 years of ICT industry experience. He is an active member of the systems administration, operations, and IP Policy communities.

In the past, Owen has worked at Hurricane Electric (Director of Professional Services), Tellme Networks (Senior Network Engineer), Exodus Communications (Senior Backbone Engineer) where he was part of the team that took Exodus from a pre-IPO start up with 2 data centers to a major global provider of hosting services, Netcom Online (Network Engineer) where he worked on a team that moved the internet from an expensive R&E tool to a widely available public access system accessible to anyone with a computer, Sun Microsystems (Senior Systems Administrator), and more.

Throughout his career, Owen has sought ways to combine innovation, technology, and policy for the benefit of society with a focus on democratizing communications and enhancing free and egalitarian access to information and information technology. He has presented ideas and training to further these ideals in more than 40 countries spanning 6 continents.

Chris Grundemann, Director, Deployment & Operationalization, Internet Society

Chris Grundemann (JNCIE #449) is the Director of Deployment and Operationalization at the Internet Society where he focuses on developing and delivering programs to foster the uptake and use of key Internet technologies. Chris is the author of Day One: Exploring IPv6 and Day One: Advanced IPv6 Configuration, as well as several IETF Internet Drafts and various industry papers. He is the founding Chair of CO ISOC, the Colorado chapter of the Internet Society, a board member for the Rocky Mountain IPv6 Task Force (RMv6TF), an elected member of the ARIN Advisory Council (AC), an appointed member of the NANOG Program Committee (PC), Chair of the DLNA TC IPv6 Task Force, Co-Chair of the UPnP IPv6 Task Force, and a member of the CEA Pv6 Transition Working Group.

Chris also maintains a personal weblog aimed primarily towards Internet related posts typically focusing on network operation and design, tech-policy and the future of the Internet.

Reynold Guerrier, President and CEO, GSIS

Over the past 20 years, Reynold Guerrier has been a pioneer in the development of the Internet in Haiti. With a Master of Science in Mobile Networks from the University of Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France, and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Sciences from l’Ecole Superieure d’Infortronique d’Haiti, he developed expertise in designing and managing complex ISP networks. He lead the team deploying the first WiMAX broadband wireless with Multilink in 2008.

Throughout his career, he has provided training to young network technicians, coached and mentored as a volunteer in the Nethope Academy Program launched after the January 2010 Earthquake to help unemployed young people to get work experience and certifications; he has also served as the interim project manager of an e-governance project financed by IDB in 2010. Former President of AHTIC, the only Haitian ICT Association, he is the CEO of GSIS, a consulting firm specializing in data mining, business intelligence, technology and innovation but continues to volunteer in the technical team of the AHTIC Internet Exchange Point through the Haiti Technology Group.

Patrick Hosein, Chief Executive Officer, TTNIC

Patrick attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he obtained five degrees including a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He has worked at Bose Corporation, Bell Laboratories, AT&T Laboratories, Ericsson and Huawei. He has published extensively with over 75 refereed journal and conference publications. He holds 38 granted and 42 pending patents in the areas of telecommunications and wireless technologies.

Patrick is presently the administrative and technical contact for the TT top level domain, CEO of TTNIC and a Professor of Computer Science at the University of the West Indies. His present areas of research include radio resource management, QoS and pricing for 5G cellular networks.

Shernon Osepa, Manager, Regional Affairs for Latin America & The Caribbean Bureau

Mr. Shernon Osepa is the Manager, Regional Affairs for Latin America & The Caribbean Bureau of the Internet Society (ISOC).

Prior to joining ISOC, Mr. Osepa was the Manager Regional Relations Caribbean for ICANN for more than three years. Before ICANN he worked as a Policy Advisor with the Telecommunications & Post Regulatory Authority (Bureau Telecommunicatie en Post) in the Netherlands Antilles for almost 6 years. Previously he worked with the local telecommunications incumbent operator UTS/Setel in Curacao, for almost nine years.

Mr. Shernon Osepa is a national of Curacao. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University for Professional Studies in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University for Professional Studies in Enschede the Netherlands and a Master’s degree in Telecommunications Regulation and Policy from the University of the West Indies in Trinidad & Tobago.

He is fluent in Dutch, English, Spanish, Papiamento and has a working understanding of French.

Mr. Osepa is based in Curacao.

Marlon Raghunanan, Technical Services Manager, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad

I’ve worked for The UWI since my BSc. in 1987 (27+ years), starting off as a graduate assistant tutoring and teaching Computer Science courses for 4 years, then assisting with Campus LAN/WAN IDB project in 1997, moving to System Engineer in 1999 and finally Technical Services Manager in 2002. I’ve been exposed to Thicknet and Thinnet networking technologies and in my younger days wrote a User Management System in PERL 5 and UNIX Bourne shell scripts to assist with managing lab users in the Computer Centre (now Campus IT Services).

I tell people that if I’ve had 2 routine days in a year then I’ve had a lot. IT has been changing & evolving constantly. I’ve worked on the IDB project where I assisted with the certification and acceptance of the CAN MM fibre backbone, the LANs in 13 buildings, servers and numerous PCs, to now where we’ve upgrade the core network in St. Augustine (STA) twice, upgraded 322 access switches in STA spanning 87+ buildings, installed a SM Fibre CAN and access network in Faculty of Medical Sciences (FMS), and presently working on an entire upgrade with WiFi for FMS plus the complete ICT infrastructure (green field) for the South Penal/Debe Campus.

I jokingly tell my team: “How many people can say that they’ve installed a CAN, 4 times?” It’s not every day you have to deploy almost 7000 network ports. I doubt many enterprises can say that they have 6506-E core switches in VSS configuration with redundant ASA Services Modules. And if that wasn’t a challenge, I also worked on the upgrade of the PBX for the Campus, a system, as deployed, could provide voice services to 10% of the entire St. Augustine population. Supporting this required upgrade of our Data Centres with redundant parallel generators, scalable redundant UPS and In-Row Precision A/C units.

Our last CAN Upgrades saw the deployment of IPv6 for network management, and we’re currently planning to move the CAN to scalable routed distribution model using EIGRP between the core and distribution layers. Interesting times…

Steve Spence, CTO, ArkiTechs Inc.

Steve Spence is CTO at ArkiTechs Inc., a technology company specializing in the research and development of creative solutions used in the provisioning network managed services, IP based network infrastructure, network security controls and data protection, cloud services and storage, VoIP telephony, video conferencing and Internet streaming services.

Steve is a founding member of the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG), a volunteer-driven team of network engineers and technologist dedicated to the development and use of ICTs in the Caribbean region. He enjoys working with young people in technology workshops and training sessions, facilitating the open transfer of his knowledge and skills.

Kevon Swift, External Relations Officer for the Caribbean, LACNIC

Kevon joined LACNIC’s External Relations and Communications Department in August 2014. As the External Relations Officer for the Caribbean, Kevon leads engagement activities with the Caribbean Internet community, including sensitisation of public sector stakeholders and coordination of technical training sessions. He was recently assigned responsibility for LACNIC’s flagship Internet-for-Development project within the region, namely the Ayitic project in Haiti.

Before joining LACNIC, Kevon worked in External Relations for the ICT Ministry of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago, where he contributed to a wide range of stakeholder engagement activities including, inter alia, various ICT public policy consultations, and an ICT School Tour, in addition to serving on the national Inter-Ministerial Committee on Cybersecurity for international cooperation and cybersecurity culture (public education) matters.

Marvin Thomas, IP Engineer, Digicel Trinidad and Tobago

Marvin Thomas is currently a network professional that brings over nine years of experience with a focus on Telecoms and Internet Service provider environment, with a focus on Core, Enterprise networking and customer solutions.

Mr. Thomas holds the capacity of an IP Engineer at Digicel Trinidad and Tobago, he currently leads the deployment of FTTx, IPTV & IPv6 services rollout across Trinidad and Tobago. He holds a number of professional level certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, Juniper, Checkpoint, Ericsson, Hurricane Electric, EC-Council & IPv6 Forum accreditations.

As an IPv6 evangelist, that possesses skills on Core and Enterprise routing technologies along with network designing as it relates to the ISP networks and telecommunications, Marvin has lead on a variety of projects involving areas such as BGPv6, OSPFv3, MPLS, CGNv6, DS-Stacking technologies & CDN solutions.

He is also an active member of the IPv6 Forum Grenada & Metro Ethernet Forum.

Bevil Wooding, Internet Strategist, Packet Clearing House

Bevil Wooding serves as an Internet Strategist at Packet Clearing House, an international non-profit supporting Internet development, including DNS, Internet Exchange Points and cybersecurity training, research, deployment and policy formulation. He is been instrumental in the establishment of Internet Exchanges Points in the Caribbean and serves as an advisor to several governments and regional institutions on technology, innovation, education and the internet economy.

He is the Program Director for the Caribbean ICT Roadshow and one of the founding members of the Caribbean Network Operators Group, CaribNOG, a volunteer-based community of network administrators and technology practitioners focused on strengthening the region’s technical capacity. Mr. Wooding regularly facilitates seminars and workshops on Internet Governance, ICT Strategy and Technology and Public Policy.

Date and Time

Thursday 05 February 2015

Location

Hyatt Regency Trinidad

1 Wrightson Road
Port of Spain, Trinidad

Sponsors