Plenary - Irish Internet Security and policies

John Haskins is attached to the Department of Justice Equality and Law Reform and is responsible for policy development in relation to the illegal and harmful use of the Internet. He was Chairman of the Government Review Group which reported on this area in 1998 and whose report established the framework within which Internet downside issues are currently addressed. He is also Deputy Chairman of the Irish Internet Advisory Board.

Plenary - HEAnet Update & Conference Overview

John will be providing an overview and an introduction to HEAnet's 2nd Conference.

He will give a high-level update on the major developments in the last 12 months and the significant ongoing changes in HEAnet's network and services.
These developments are set against the background of dramatic changes in the financial environment and the telecomms industry and against progress in other National Research and Education Networks and the major issues and services which are foreseen to be important internationally.

Plenary - New Services and Developments

Managed network services are the "beating heart" of HEAnet and the company continues to enhance the level of performance for its clients and their 150,000 end users. At the same time, work is under way to scope and develop new services working on top of a quality broadband network. These cover areas such as
hot standby servers, anti-spam measures, intrusion detection, gigabit Ethernet access, IPv6 and video services. The talk will deal with these new value-added service developments, as well as reporting on major enhancements in the core business.

Parallel B1 - Creating good Web Sites for Higher Education: strategies and practice I

Most universities have implemented a website. Many are now experiencing problems associated with maintaining the content of that website for a variety of reasons.
We discuss what has led to web content management, what
is driving it, and discuss, in general, frameworks that help organisations to understand how to manage and control their websites better. The goal of this presentation is to discuss the generic problems facing content preparation and evaluate the current methods available to help remedy them, as well as identify areas in which more research is needed.

Parallel B1 - Creating good Web Sites for Higher Education: strategies and practice II

Lisa will be conveying the experience acquired during DKIT’s acquisition of a CMS, from the perspective of the Institute & the experience thus far, (the joys, heartache...) to include details on specification/requirements determining, invite to demo, critical appraisal based on spec., final spec., decision-making, and the veritable roller-coaster that is (attempted) set-up & implementation.
She is hoping that with the assistance of their chosen CMS software company, she should be able to have a working link to the system for a ‘live demo’ of the DKIT Intranet at embryonic stage.

Parallel A1 - DNS, - Deceptively Simple

This talk aims to be a guide to practical DNS (Domain Name System) administration, covering best practice in configuration and maintenance of forward and reverse zone files. As well as outlining the significance of aspects of configuration, some of the most common pitfalls and their effect will also be highlighted.
Examples will be using the most widespread nameserver software, BIND.

Parallel A2 - High availability using IP anycast routing

Services provided on the Internet are commonly replicated for high(er) availability. Identifying which one of a number of replicated servers a client should use may be done in a number of ways. Some of these depend on fault detection and recovery in the client application software. Others depend on special monitoring servers.

IP anycast routing allows replicas of a service to be advertised using a common IP address, and selection of the appropriate server for a particular client to be performed in the network routing layer, rather than by the client or by some external service. The method offers advantages including higher service availability and reduced administrative overhead, but is applicable only to certain kinds of service.

The technology, its implementation, and its applicability will be explored, with reference to practical examples.

Parallel B2 - Implementing Blackboard

Universities and libraries in Ireland and the world are implementing Blackboard as one of the core tools for their Virtual Learning Environments.

With an extensive experience with Blackboard, Paul will be able to clarify and explore what's involved in this implementation, and will illustrate with some examples in Ireland and the UK.

Parallel B2 - E-Reserve Pilot Project

The Library at NUI Maynooth in conjunction with the Department of Computer Science piloted a six month project to investigate the digitisation of selected items in the Reserve Collection. The Reserve Collection consists mainly of articles from journals or newspapers and chapters from books. These items are sent in paper by members of the teaching staff to the Library where they are catalogued, included in the Reserve Collection and stored behind the Circulation Desk. Students request these items at the Desk and they are issued for library use only, for a three hour period.
This project employed a Computer Science undergraduate student to research the possibility of making the Reserve Collection available electronically. This included researching copyright, the digitisation process i.e. scanning, file-naming and devising a method whereby documents could be successful retrieved by the end user.
By the conclusion of the pilot project 87 items were available in the E-Reserve Collection via the Library Catalogue with the provision of adding more over the coming year.

Mary Delaney is an Assistant Librarian with the Information Services Department in NUI Maynooth. Before joining this department three years ago she worked for two years as the Librarian managing the Library at the Maynooth Outreach Campus in Kilkenny.

Parallel A4 -Video Streaming in RTE

This talk will present RTE Interactive as a case study of how internet video streams may be produced, archived, indexed, and presented to internet users the world over. Focusing on the technical issues and requirements, it will look at how a programme that appears on RTE Television makes its way onto the web step by step, and what the future may hold for Internet Video delivery
from RTE.

The Internet has become a critical resource for business of all sizes. Application and data sharing with customers, partners and suppliers is becoming the standard way of doing business. Providing such a service through a private corporate network or using the services of a hosting service provider incurs the same requirements of security without compromising performance, flexibility or manageability. This talk discusses security solutions available on the market today to address IDC security and performance, including web switching, SSL accelerators, and switch-based firewalls.

Speaker Background

Jerry Teahan joined the Mathematics and Computing Department at Cork Institute of Technology in April 2002. Prior to that he work with Nortel Networks for eight years, most recently as a senior systems engineer with Nortel Networks, Sophia Antipolis, France with responsibility for security solutions, content delivery networking and IP Telephony. Jerry holds an MEng (UL), BEng(DCU), Dip Eng(Carlow) , and Cert Sc (Tralee).

Parallel B4 - PKI, the future

The barriers to secure electronic mail backed by a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) including the lack of legal backing, poor software support and high cost are slowly dissolving. This talk will focus on how secure mail is
becoming an essential tool for many information professionals and how the Irish University sector is leading the charge.

Parallel B5 - Netflow. Enabling network defence

There is tremendous diversity in the traffic patterns of large networks.
Unlimited Internet access implies excessive heterogeneity in terms of the types, volumes and endpoints of user traffic on these networks.

Warren will discuss various tools and procedures that are used in evaluating traffic traversing the network.
The focus will be on the approach taken utilizing netflow technologies and how it is used for threat detection, prevention and post attack analysis. Warren will discribe how HEAnet are actively assisting customers by providing a useful breakdown of network flows and the ability to isolate dramatic changes in traffic patterns to a specific protocol or traffic flow.

Warren joined HEAnet in Nov 2001. Prior to that he worked with Broadcom Eireann Reseach for two years, and previously for EMC and Scientific Systems.

Dave Wilson, Senior Network Engineer, HEAnet

Niall Richard Murphy, Enigma Consulting

Plenary - IP numbering. Featuring IPv6

* IP Policy

IP numbering policies are formed by us, the users themselves, by building consensus in open forums such as RIPE. Overseeing this process is ICANN, an organisation which itself is undergoing a process of change that is likely to affect the shape of the internet in the future. This talk is about the policies that affect our day to day work, how they are changed, and how we can make our voices heard in their formation.

*IPv6 from 50 thousand feet

IPv6, the up-and-coming new version of IP, is beginning to be deployed in the real world. In this talk, we will examine why IPv6 is useful, how it can save you money and time, and what some its more interesting features will mean for your networks, hopefully without getting bogged down in technical details. We will also examine current deployment in Ireland, and identify some of the things you need to do to begin using this 'new protocol on the block'.

Niall Richard Murphy runs his own consultancy and implementation company, Enigma Consulting. Niall has been involved with the Internet since 1995, when he and many others founded the UCD Internet Society. He has worked for many of the core Internet organisations in Ireland, including the INEX, the IEDR, Ireland On-line and even HEAnet many moons ago. Niall is the author or co-author of numerous technical articles and talks, including an RFC on 3G and IPv6, and has spoken to audiences at numerous RIPE conferences, the CNRI, and a previous HEAnet Network Managers conference. He is the co-author of an up-coming book with David Malone on IPv6, to be published by Pearson Education.

Keynote Session -Waves of light at the end of the telecom tunnel

Yves Poppe has spent his more than 30 years carreer in data communications with both maufacturers and telecom carriers. Yves' close relationship with the R&E community dates back to 1994 when working for Teleglobe, he made the first transatlantic STM-1 available for next generation internet connections between the North-American and European R&E networks.Yves participated in the G7 GIBN initiative which led to the creation of the Chicago STARTAP and was member of the Canarie Policy Bboard and represented Teleglobe at the TERENA General Assembly, in Internet2 and APAN. In 2001 he facilitated the first trancontinental wavelength connection at 2.5Gb between SURFnet in Amsterdam and STARLIGHT in Chicago. Earlier this year he joined Hexago, offspring of Viagénie, a company at the forefront of next generation internet technology with work on IPv6, optical internet protocols and wave disk drives. Viagénie is a founding member of the IPv6 forum and an active participant and contributor in the IETF.

Yves gave a number of presentations on the impact of the telecom recession, most recently at the Nordunet conference in April. He will provide an update of his views on this rapidly evolving saga and the inherent opportunities for the R&E world under the caption "Waves of light at the end of the telecom tunnel"

Keynote Session - Advancing network infrastructure for research and education: a window of opportunity in the current telecoms infrastructure climate?

The telecoms crash in the US and elsewhere has opened up a potential opportunity for the research and education community to acquire fiber assets to support the network infrastructure needs of its researchers, faculty and students - perhaps uniquely in this period of time.

How are universities; regional and metropolitan academic networks; and national research networks organizing to take advantage of this potential opportunity? What are some of the risks and pitfalls? What are the potentially gains? A review of some recent activities in the US and elsewhere will be presented.

Plenary - Grid Computing in Ireland: COSMOGRID

The aim of the Grid-enabled Computational Physics of Natural Phenomena Project is to study natural phenomena occurring in our cosmos (or universe) using a very powerful computer system called a Grid. Hence, the Project has gained the abbreviated title of 'CosmoGrid'.

These natural phenomena range from earthquakes to climate change to supernova explosions. To date, scientists investigating these phenomena have been limited by the amount of available computing power. Newly emerging 'Grid' technologies aim to change all that. The use of grid-computing will enable scientists in Ireland to research and model more effectively the complex systems that make up our universe.

Plenary - Wireless Networking Installation

Initial Installation (Access points, NIC's and management S/W)
Site survey (Reasons, Lessons)
Tools (Tools available for site survey)
Sharing the Radio Spectrum (Research and Production network)
Security (Overview of problems and solutions)
VPN solution (Protecting your hardware investment)
Wireless policy (Importance of policy)
Lessons (In Hindsight)
Future proofing the Network (802.11b and 802.11a)

Plenary - Campus Networks, views from the trenches: DIT

DIT are in the process of implementing a new multi-campus network involving 40 buildings in Dublin's city centre. The upgrade involves a new voice and data network, utilising gigabit ethernet, microwave radio and incorporates the existing PBX solution. Dearbhla will give an outline of why the upgrade was necessary, describe the new design and give a description of the pitfalls and experiences of a large network upgrade.

Filtering Spam With SpamAssassin

In the last year, the volume of spam (also known as unsolicited commercial e-mail) has increased by over 400%, and now makes up a third of all e-mail traffic on the internet. Justin Mason, author of SpamAssassin -- the leading open-source spam-filter -- discusses ways
to filter spam from your mail systems, using SpamAssassin and other systems, and ways to ensure your systems aren't misused by spammers.

Justin Mason is a Dublin-based software developer. During his career he wrote several open-source projects with thousands of users, architected and developed a commercial product for Iona Technologies, and previously was their network admin for several years. He is also a founding member of Ireland Offline.