“Carrier microwave radio networks in Central NSW”

Dainen Keogh; Talk

We were commissioned to build a high capacity licensed microwave radio network in central NSW, the purpose of this network was to connect a fibre service from an existing mine site to two additional sites over 100 kms away, the network needed to be high capacity 800Mbps+ and highly redundant.

I'd like to write a presentation on how we designed and built the network, including the preliminary planning, spectrum licencing, network and radio frequency design, power systems and construction.

If acepted I am happy to condense it into a lightning talk or make it a full length presentation.

Thanks, Dainen

“EVPN-VXLAN as Datacenter fabric solution – An ABB Journey”

Shay Saleh; Talk

With huge volumes of data generated, moved around, and processed every second, underlying networks must be able to meet the new growing demands. I want to share our journey - through thick and thin – to move away from decades-old datacentre design to a more modern architecture.

We’ll look at a snapshot of the ‘before’ state of the network, highlighting key challenges and issues the team were facing every day as the drivers for change and how we are planning to transform the network and picture our ‘target’ state:

• Limited scalability to support today’s bandwidth and complicated requirements.

• Outdated infrastructure.

• Complex network management.

• Lack of network visibility.

• Utilizing human resources inefficiently for resolving minor issues.

• Absence of automation.

You will (hopefully) walk away from this presentation more informed about:

• Striking a balance between must-haves and desirables when capturing requirements.

• Available technologies and how they compare against each other (Classic Ethernet to EVPN-VLXLAN)

How to find the right technology fit for your requirements.

• Where to focus your automation efforts (day 0,1,2 activities).

• How to plan execution including greenfield rollout and migration strategy.

Come and join me to find out how ABB solved it!

“Going NUTS over Network Testing”

Tim Raphael; Talk

btw: Title is a WIP

This presentation will given an overview of testing methodologies and how they can be applied to network operational use-cases. A live-ish demo will be used to highlight how operators can use open-source, Python testing frameworks to codify and pipeline network changes and improve success rates with declarative, repeatable and reliable testing processes.

Side-notes: software used in this presso:
- Containerlab (Open Source)
- Nokia SR-Linux, Nokia SR-OS NOSs
- NUTS (Network Unit Testing), OSS framework that integrates with PyTest and Nornir.

“Green Networking - End to End design and operation”

Travis O'Hara; Talk

What is and can be done differently in networking technology around chip, device, config, protocol, and network design to reduce power and carbon emissions for sustainability and cost. How can we achieve this while maintaining highest levels of performance and resiliency in networks.

“How the evolving DDoS attack landscape has re-invented our defense architecture”

Nathan Harding; Talk

We discuss our globally distributed DDoS mitigation architecture, which involves an appliance built in-house and installed across our global network. Our design leverages the DPDK framework with our in-house heuristics engine. In our talk, we discuss the problem we set out to solve, the challenges along the way and our decision to architect our own in-house mitigation platform. This talk will also cover why we went down the path of building our own platform and how this has allowed us to rapidly respond to dynamic threats.

As attack complexity grows, so does the need for the ability to iterate quickly upon our mitigation architecture and strategy. From a network perspective, we realised the importance of building and operating a global anycast network, including careful selection of connectivity-rich hubs, external ports and backbone design when designing our DDoS mitigation platform.

One of the challenges we faced with our global reach was the necessity of shared information between our mitigation devices. We incorporate a groundbreaking shared messaging architecture that allows every device to share threat intelligence globally with 200ms propagation. When a threat is learned in one site, the same knowledge is broadcasted to every site worldwide such that the attack can be scrubbed with high precision, no matter if that site is seeing 1% of the attack volume or 90%. We will discuss why this was a requirement at our scale due to the multiplicative nature of attacks and their distribution.

Another key feature of our mitigation appliances is the ability to establish baseline customer traffic through heuristics, and surgically identify and extract anomalies on that traffic. We outline a methodology which involves sampling every packet towards a customer in real time, and once sampled, features within that timeseries are further extracted and profiled. This allows for surgical blocking of specific vectors that have a sharp deviation from that tracked feature. The method and implementation of our heuristics design will be further discussed during the presentation.

Our talk aims to highlight the importance of DDoS mitigation for networks of all sizes. We will also breakdown several attacks we've experienced and provide a high level overview of what the DDoS landscape is today on a global scale.

“Let's Measure the AU Internet Ecosystem”

Aftab Siddiqui; Talk

Let's Measure the AU Internet Ecosystem
The aim is to gain insight into the resilience and interdependence within our ecosystem. We will delve into various aspects:

Content and Security

• Examining the top 50,000 websites in Australia, sourced from the Tranco Top 1 million list, to determine their hosting locations.
• Identifying the primary, secondary, and tertiary CDNs utilized by these websites.
• Analyzing sites hosted natively (non-CDN) and those dual-stacked for IPv4 and IPv6.
• Assessing major government websites to ascertain their hosting locations, IPv6 availability, RPKI ROA presence, and ROV implementation.

Upstream Diversity

• Reflecting on the lessons learned from past incidents like the Optus outage to understand the implications of centralization.
• Mapping the interconnections between ASNs and identifying the predominant upstream providers in the country.
• Evaluating the RPKI implementation status among these operators.

DNS Diversity

• Exploring the potential impact of a disruption in Google DNS services.
• Investigating the DNS services commonly used by consumers and operators in Australia.
• Comparing DNS usage patterns between fixed broadband and mobile operators, and any disparities in IPv6 versus IPv4 usage.

IPv6 Adoption

• Assessing the current status of IPv6 adoption, particularly among enterprises and smaller operators.
• Addressing the stagnant IPv6 adoption rate in Australia and potential strategies for improvement.

RPKI

• Recognizing Australia's progress in ROA validation while acknowledging the lag in ROA creation.
• Examining ROA uptake among small operators and enterprises, and exploring the efficacy of max-prefix length solutions for this category.

Through measurement and analysis, my aim is to gain some understanding of the Australian Internet ecosystem and identify areas for improvement and future development. If PC believes that I should spend more time on certain measurement and skip another then I'm happy to do that.

“Measuring Starlink”

Geoff Huston; Talk

Satellite Internet services have traditionally been tediously slow for interactive data services. The physics of geostationary orbits have meant that the services that have used these "high orbit" slots have been only for the use of the desperate when no terrestrial solution was p[ossible,

Starlink has changed all that. With a constellation of around 5,000 spoacecraft orbiting at an altitude of 550km its possible to support a continuous high speed data server almost anywhgere on the surface of the planet. But just how good is this service?

This presention describes the Starlnk system as well as a brief look at the physics of low earth orbiting satellite systemsx, and then looks at a performance measurement exervice that goes beypnd simple speedtest to look at Starlink's service from a protocol performance perspective,

(Jocelyn got onto my case at APRICOT'2024 and asked me to submit thios to AUSNOG! :-))

“Navigating the Upgrade Maze: A Tale of Modernising Router Software Versions”

Jarryd Sullivan; Talk

Follow our journey operating a wholesale access network running on legacy end of support software from around 2018 and how we overcame various challenges to bring our devices back into a supported software release. Faced with several known bugs making step upgrades difficult and stability concerns resulting in regular operational impact we devised a plan to navigate the intricate web of challenges to test, deploy and monitor our upgrades, overcoming the obstacles to bring our network infrastructure back into compliance. This tale highlights the nuanced process of managing router upgrades in a dynamic network landscape, offering insights and lessons learned for organisations navigating similar transitions.

“New ways of deploying a disaster recovery mobile network solution.”

simon Lardner; Talk

Telecommunications are crucial in coordinating effective response and recovery efforts following or during natural disasters, but services are often exposed to significant risks of being damaged or inoperable due to loss of power supply during such emergency situations. This presentation by a deep subject matter expert will include a technical presentation on an emerging technology that uses a tethered heavy lift drone as a ‘mobile tower in the sky’.
This technology is an innovative way of mitigating loss of mobile communications during disaster situations

“Photonic and Packet Networks Collide”

Nic Tippelt; Talk

I have spent the last eighteen months deploying a greenfield open optical network to support continued capacity growth across Australia. As we've seen capacity levels skyrocket through COVID, along with the development of AI has led to an unprecedented demand for point-to-point data. The normalization of networks is moving to a packet optical design, combining functions of an optical network, such as ROADM, Amplification, Route and Select architectures, with normal carrier-grade IP networks.

I'd like to present a fundamental overview of photonic networks, such as ROADM (and its ability to provide unique redundancy and resiliency options for overlay networks), amplification, and then how this can be implemented into carrier-grade IP networks with coherent optics becoming standardized.

Further, I will discuss how carriers can utilize unique offerings, such as third-party spectrum (or Alien Wavelength), to better facilitate capacity growth across the network.

“Practical AI Networking Innovations”

Matthew Thurbon; Talk

This vendor-neutral presentation will explore the latest advancements in networking for AI. It will begin by outlining the critical networking demands of AI applications, including the requirements for high bandwidth, low latency, and energy-efficient networks. It will highlight the role of standards-based LPO (Linear Optical Pluggable) transceivers in enhancing data transmission over optical networks, offering significant improvements in power consumption, cost, and speed beyond 800Gbps. The presentation will also introduce Ultra Ethernet, an industry-driven evolution by the UltraEthernet Consortium (UEC), designed to meet the escalating demands of AI workloads through superior performance and scalability. Attendees will gain insights into how these technologies can revolutionise AI networking, providing the infrastructure necessary for next-generation AI applications and data centres.

“Reinventing the IX”

Chris Rogers; Talk

IXs have been around for decades, and have largely remained unchanged until recent years. In this presentation we’ll review changes in the market, and if the additional services that are now being offered are beneficial to the operator community, and what’s required to support further increases in traffic growth, which will be especially important as there continues to be new data centers built.

Outline:
1. Quick background on me
a. I like peering
2. Traditionally, what is an IX?
3. What problems does an IX solve?
4. Benefits IXs provide
a. One port, many networks
b. Reduce cross connect opex
c. Introductions and facilitation for bilats and PNIs
5. Challenges IXs face today
a. Transit prices continue to fall quickly
i. Not as relevant in Australian markets
ii. There’s an increasing financial disincentive to peer
b. Billing model
i. Flat rate vs 95th percentile
c. This is causing network operators to shift traffic away
d. The need to innovate
i. But should this happen?
e. Not a one-stop-shop
i. Networks will still need transit
f. The need to remain politically neutral
g. There’s an ever increasing range of port speeds to support
6. Distractions
a. ASN count
b. Traffic graphs
c. Paid peering/transit
i. But maybe this is good
7. Where should we go?
a. Define how an IX provides value to its constituents
b. What is transit unable to do?
c. PNI-as-a-service
d. flexible billing models
8. Question for the audience
a. What level of redundancy do you expect from an IX?
9. Questions from the audience?

“S.M.S. – So Many Scams: A Snarky Dive into Australia's SMS Scamdemic”

Eric 'Pinky' Pinkerton; Talk

OMG AusPost won't stop w/ the missed parcel texts! 😡 And E-toll still wants our 💸!
Surprise, surprise, SMS scams are thriving Down Under, with 2022's record-breaking $3.1 billion loss (an 80% jump!) and a cool $1.3 million disappearing daily in 2023.
So, what the hell is going on here? And are we as an industry doing enough to stop them?
Let's dissect this mess:
• Are we just easy targets, or is our telco landscape a scammer's paradise compared to the rest of the world?
• What is the scammers playbook? How do they exploit the system, and where do telcos unwittingly become their accomplices?
• Are the rules toothless? What the hell are STIR/SHAKEN and RPKI anyway, and why haven't they saved us yet? Why is originating number overstamping still a thing here, and how easy is it for some overseas scammer to impersonate your mum?
• What can the average Aussie actually do to fight back? Beyond just deleting dodgy texts, that is.
This session isn't about pointing fingers; it's about calling out the bullshit, finding solutions, and maybe, just maybe, making life a little harder for those opportunistic scammers.
Buckle up, because this is going to be a wild ride.

“Space Weather & the impact of geomagnetic induction on submarine cable systems”

Jonathan Gleeson; Talk

Submarine cables are susceptible to problems during extreme geomagnetic disturbances because of geomagnetically induced voltages. An analysis of the potential impact with data from recent solar storms.

“Technical Analysis of Australia’s Fastest 5G Network Rollout”

Paul Tremlett; Talk

A leader in network technology, Paul Tremlett, General Manager - Technology Strategy & Innovation; will provide an in-depth technical analysis of Australia’s fastest 5G network rollout, offering a comprehensive behind-the-scenes view. The session will explore the advanced engineering techniques, innovative technologies, and meticulous planning that facilitated this unprecedented deployment speed.

The discussion will also address the critical business impacts, such as enhanced network capacity, reduced latency, and increased reliability, which drive competitive advantages and operational efficiencies. Additionally, the session will examine the substantial improvements in customer outcomes, shifting user experiences, enabling low-latency communications, and paving the way for future advancements and smart city applications. Finally with network sharing being top of mind, Paul will remark on the opportunities and efficiencies this brings to the market.

“The evolution of PON”

Pradap Rajagopal; Talk

Passive Optical Networking (PON) has become the de-facto method to deliver high speed broadband in most markets globally.

In this session we'll recap the basics of PON, where the industry currently stands in terms of standards and deployments, and discuss how PON continues to evolve beyond 10G to enable higher speeds and support ever increasing traffic demands.