SANOG V, an expectation fulfilled

A tutorial in progress

"It can now be claimed that the event was a success," said Sumon Ahmed Sabir, convener of SANOG V, citing that the number of participation at the workshops and tutorials reached around two hundred in total. Previously, network professionals from outside the host-country mostly attended SANOG programmes. According to Sumon, in case of SANOG V it was just the reverse.

It should be mentioned that SANOG V programme included a five-day long channel of workshops offered on topics like 'Cisco ISP Routing and BGP Multi-homing', 'APNIC DNS' and 'IP/NSP Security'. A two-day long tutorial session on 'routing', 'VOIP basics and SIP deployment' and 'IPv6' followed by a conference on 'infrastructure and security', 'emerging technologies' and regional updates was also in SANOG V's schedule.

Akhtaruzzaman Monju, president, ISPAB and director of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI), holds high hopes on the follow-up activities of the trained population. "We may expect very well that they will get hundred others trained and this process will grow internally," Monju said. He also mentioned about the digital divide that exists within the infrastructure of the nation. "There is a sheer difference in attitude between a local graduate from Dhaka and a graduate from any other location of the country," he says, claiming that this is the consequence of lack of knowledge-sharing as well as missing the right exposure, and the 'right exposure' may as well be the internet, which is the globally considered infinite encyclopaedia of knowledge. "What answer do we have for the rural graduate, who may have had the right but untapped talent we needed, when he asks us who was responsible for not providing all the facilities that were available here in Dhaka?" he puts forth, while referring that it is high time to make internet available in every corner of the country.

The president also mentioned how software development, which attains most of the interests of local experts these days, is not the only thing that should be in focus towards the development of an ICT-driven nation. "Knowledge sharing is the key-factor in developing an entire nation, and without right accessibility to the net, this will remain a volatile idea as it has always been," Monju further added, emphasising on how more efforts should be made on building better grounds for data-security, sharing, and optimised networking, which in turn will also contribute towards the economical growth. Monju also mentioned the help from the foreign ministry for arranging visas for two of the trainers.

"If such seminars are held three to four times a year, and if each one allows at least 5 percent knowledgebase update, then we may be looking at 20 percent technical knowledgebase growth per annum," he said.

"Though equipped with almost only the basic level of routing knowledge, they have responded well enough to take it to the higher grounds," says Ananth Nagrajan, programme chair, SANOG V, mentioning how in due time these trained network professionals may effectively bring in more experts towards the telecommunication community. Nagrajan also mentions that the trainee population had lacked exposure to the emerging technologies needed to build a stable infrastructure. He hopes that with such hands-on training from the experts occurring more often in Bangladesh and with the idea of having its own fiber-optic submarine cable backbone, the country will not take long before it joins the race of emerging as a new cyber nation.

"Free flow of interests among the trainees is rare in modern times," said David Meyer, director of the University of Oregon's Advanced Network Technology Centre, and the keynote speaker at the opening planery of the conference. He was referring to how the trainees interacted with each other's problems while the tutorials were being held. "This scenario is much like the United States fifteen years back," Meyer states, while reassuring that it will not take Bangladesh too long to overcome the lag. "The task is to give Bangladeshi network professionals and technologists the right exposure by the right hands and you have yourself an IT-oriented nation."

The organisers hope that the Government will step in more effectively to arrange such seminars and not entirely leave the arrangements on the private sector. SANOG V was entirely sponsored by local and international organisations, with no financial support from the local government.

"Either we need to have better trainers from abroad, like this time, or we need them to take us abroad through scholarship programmes, so that we may update our technology knowledgebase and apply it back home," said one of the trainees, Naushad Ahmed, director, System Administration, Bijoy Online, who also holds 7 years of local experience in networking. Once the ICT ministry steps in to sending IT professionals for international training, the cost of such attempts is also expected to lower effectively.

One of the more important topics held at the tutorials was on 'dynamic routing' which is expected to increase connectivity on all internal routing and hence claim an increase in internet exchange. "Till now we were using static routing techniques, but now we learned about dynamic routing, which can improve the scenario, once implemented" said Mainul Islam, system manager, Alcatel (Bangladesh), another trainee at SANOG V. Like many other from the group attending the tutorials, Islam also hopes on developing a stronger internal networking system followed by establishments of servers from international domains such as Yahoo or Hotmail. "If we become successful on assuring a secured and faster network, that day will not be too far," he added.

"We have had very well-responding groups of people who attended the workshops," states Gaurav Raj Upadhaya, Nepal Internet Exchange, one of the trainers for SANOG V. He also mentioned how the trainees updated themselves with their acquired knowledge from the tutorials when they went home. "They really did their homework before they came in the next day," Gaurav says, and this meant the trainees put in efforts to learn what they were offered.

Despite the limitations of time and technical specifications available, Cisco Systems provided instrumentations worth USD 25,000 for the SANOG V programme.

Certificates, declaring successful completion of 'Cisco ISP Routing and BCD Multi-homing Workshop', were distributed among the network professionals, who attended the training sessions, under the assembly of SANOG and ISPAB. SANOG VI is the next SANOG programme in line after this. It will be hosted by Bhutan Telecom and will be held at Thimphu in July.