Networkshop49 programme

Speaker: Steve Kennett, executive director of e-infrastructure, Jisc.

• Download a transcript of the Janet Network state of the nation update (.docx)

Speaker: Jeremy Sharp, Janet chief technology officer, Jisc.

A look back over the last 12 months, focusing on how the community have used the network, the challenges we’ve faced and how these experiences will help shape the future.

• Download a transcript for big data in biology (.docx)

Speaker: Ewan Birney, deputy director general, EMBL.

This session will outline the changes in how important data science has become for biological and health research, from pandemic genomic tracking through to human genomics. The importance of integrated disk, compute and bandwidth will be discussed.

This session is delivered in partnership with Cisco.

Speaker: Steve Kenward, Cisco

Driving simplification to enable digital agility in cloud-first world: Cisco will cover a myth-busting summary of the ZTN model, how it relates to network segmentation, the new architectures emerging from it, how they each try to solve multicloud and how to cover the security gap personal devices bring to all of it, and how securing and managing them can be made simple.

Speaker: Anjanesh Babu, systems architect and network manager (gardens and museums), University of Oxford.

This session will explore how to shape an identity and access management strategy. It will also cover how to use the same control plane for cloud and on-premise; reuse, repurpose and apply conditional logic at entry points.

Speakers:

• Steven Jack, multimedia communications team leader, University of Glasgow
• Campbell Jamieson, learning spaces manager, University of Strathclyde
• Bruce Rodger, head of IT infrastructure, University of Strathclyde

Today, video collaboration tools such as Zoom, Teams and many others are an essential part of our working environment, and it’s hard to imagine our working lives– and indeed our family lives – lives without them. Terms such as “Zooming” have entered our language, becoming as ubiquitous as “Googling” and “Hoovering”. Yet only 18 months ago, it was a completely different picture.

Steve, Campbell and Bruce have been involved in the provision of video services within universities and industry for many years. In this presentation, they will review the journey that we have taken, from the days of the embryonic Janet Video Conference services to the pervasive provision today. They will look at how institutions have adapted their teaching and support models to accommodate these new ways of working, and give some suggestions on how classroom technologies may develop over coming years. They will reflect on the impact that these changes may have on campus network infrastructures.

Drawing inspiration from “Top Gear”, they promise a conversational presentation, and guarantee no Powerpoint!

Optimising large scale data transfers on Janet

Speakers:

• Raul Lopes, researcher, Jisc
• Duncan Rand, end-to-end performance adviser, Jisc

Supporting large-scale data analysis on JASMIN

Speaker: Matt Pritchard, operations manager, STFC.

EBI’s data transfer tools and services

Speaker: Andrea Cristofori, senior site reliability engineer, European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI).

During Andrea's session he will be taking you through his personal experiences covering:

• Transfer services offered at EMBL-EBI
• Multi data centre transfer provisioning
• Globus Connect Server setup currently available at EMBL-EBI
• 4PB data transfer from EMBL-EBI to AWS achieved with Globus Connect Server

Q&A

These sessions will be followed by a Q&A.

This session is delivered in partnership with Axians.

Speaker: Alex Gittings, professional services consultant, Axians

Axians' professional services consultant, Alex, will guide you through how Axians customers have been able to get a head start with network automation, integrating both commercial and open source tools to give you the power over visibility.

This session is delivered in partnership with Aruba.

Speaker: Simon Wilson, Aruba CTO, UKI

The past 18 months have seen unprecedented changes in the way we work, learn and play. This has presented immense challenges to learning delivery, IT delivery and even just staying connected. If we want learning to thrive we must give students and faculty a better way to stay connected on site and online with a more integrated learning environment. IT needs to change and we need to give the IT team the tools to deliver more services, more rapidly, especially when the boundaries of the campus are no longer there.

This session is delivered in partnership with Telent.

Speaker: Gerard Donohue, chief technical officer, Telent

The presentation with explore how the latest advances in networking can be applied to differentiate the student experience, enhance research projects, integrate multiple applications including building services and CCTV, and provide insight through AI driven analytics with applications for the wellbeing of students.

Speaker: Prof Mischa Dohler, FIEEE FREng FRSA FIET, department of engineering, King's College London.

This session will discuss the challenges and opportunities in 6G, notably applications, architecture and technologies.

IPv6 on Janet

Speaker: Tim Chown, network development manager, Jisc

A brief summary of the position of IPv6 deployment on Janet.

IPv6 at Imperial

Speaker: David Stockdale, network engineer, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine.

David will discuss where they are with IPv6, recent developments and upcoming plans.

The AIT experience with IPv6-only wifi

Speakers:

• Ian Hallissy, senior technical officer - networking, Athlone Institute of Technology
• Colin Donohue, technical officer - networking, Athlone Institute of Technology

This session will cover the Athlone IT IPv6 timeline goals for their IPv6 wifi project, IPv6-only wifi technology design and overall IPv6 experience.

Speaker: Nicolas Lemaitre, director, customer and commercial, Openreach.

Openreach and the transformation of the UK digital infrastructure:

• Rolling-out fibre to the premises
• Evolving business connectivity
• Moving to All IP

This session is delivered in partnership with Cisco.

Speakers:

• Neil Miller, Cisco.
• Ian Waters, Cisco

Adopting new cloud, SaaS and internet-based architectures can accelerate digital transformation for staff and students, but it also introduces third party service dependencies that can be difficult to manage. Cisco will demonstrate how ThousandEyes delivers end-to-end visibility of application delivery regardless of who owns the application or infrastructure.

Digital leadership equipping the workforce of the future

Speaker: John Sumpter, subject specialist: digital practice (leadership), Jisc.

How the digital leaders programme can benefit technical staff.

Apprenticeships - what are they like?

Speakers:

• Michael Murray, network access apprentice, Jisc
• Megan Lambden, project manager apprentice, Jisc

In this session, Michael and Megan will cover:

• What its like to be an apprentice at Jisc
• What they've learned since joining Jisc
• How the degree side works and is working for them
• The benefits they've found with being an apprentice

Speaker: Mark Charlton, network services specialist, Warwick University.

This session will take you through Mark's decision making process and the choices he had to wrestle with such as:

• Refresh or replace
• What shall we buy?
• Funding and procurement
• 2020 strikes
• Where next?

Speaker: Colin Cooper, assistant director network infrastructure, University of Glasgow.

Session details TBC.

Speakers:

• Rhys Smith, chief technical architect trust and identity, Jisc
• Mark Williams, identity verification service manager, Jisc
• Jon Agland, technical services manager, Jisc

In this session we will be deep diving into the UKAMF, how it benefits members, and the different ways that you can look to participate in the federation.

It will include tips on how to improve technical standards – improving these across our membership base is a key objective for the federation.

It will also give an explanation of Shibboleth and OpenAthens, the benefits of a fully managed service and how it can support a move to cloud.

This session is delivered in partnership with Cisco.

Speaker: Ashley Pilbeam.

The session will discuss how the Cisco SecureX platform can help integrate your security tools, provide extensive threat investigation capabilities as well as remediation leveraging built-in integrations and workflow-based orchestration.

This session is delivered in partnership with Gamma.

Speaker: Sam Winterbottom, public sector director, Gamma.

This session will cover:

• Why it's important to utilise readily available Unified Communication tools
• What is Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams
• Options and benefits for giving Microsoft Teams a voice
• Choosing the right partner
• How to deliver a Teams UC deployment for success

Speaker: Jeremy Sharp, Janet chief technology officer, Jisc.

• Download a transcript for taking control of your public cloud (.docx)

Speaker: Josh Fry, director of cloud, Jisc.

Cloud is increasingly an imperative for our members; underpinning strategies that encompass Education 4.0, digital transformation, resilience, security and agility in service delivery. Cloud is directly supporting cutting edge research; accelerating access to high performance cloud computing environments, allowing researchers to focus on achieving rapid results and high-quality research outcomes.

This session will introduce the programme for the day and look at how cloud is being utilised by members to help address their operational challenges and strategic objectives.

Speaker: Dr Hannah Fry, associate professor in the mathematics of cities at the centre for advanced spatial analysis, UCL.

We're living through times of extraordinary uncertainty - so why not have some in talk form.

As an audience, you can choose the stories and ideas you want to hear, all themed around the irreducibility of randomness, our difficult relationship with uncertainty and the power and limitations of using data to guide our decisions.

Why try automation?

Speaker: Ian Nightingale, senior network engineer, University of York.

A high-level explanation of network automation for those new to the topic, dispelling the myth that it is a tool to avoid having to enter the same CLI lines into a lot of network devices. With a demo/walk-through to show how simple lines of code can create powerful tools that can solve everyday network issues without human interaction. The talk will move on to discuss how anyone, or any team, with no coding experience can take their first steps to building their own tools.

Automating the Jisc managed router service and Janet access programme

Speaker: David Richardson, senior network engineer, Jisc.

This session will provide an overview of how we have successfully used Ansible-based automation in a variety of network operation tasks:

• Upgrading router software
• Reporting device configuration status
• Updating configurations on the Managed Router Service
• Generation and deployment of initial JAP hardware configurations

Speakers:

• Ceri Davies, assistant director IT and enterprise, Cardiff University
• Lyn Rhys, lead cloud solutions consultant, Jisc

A conversation with Ceri Davies of Cardiff University about their drivers to create new cloud capability on Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Speakers:

• James Alexander, director of digitial transformation, Warwick University
• Tony Pauley, CIO, Warwick University

This session will outline how the audit and engagement with the ICO progressed, key ICO audit findings and how Warwick responded. It will cover the ongoing actions and having to be an early mover in the sector, helping to establish some sector-wide guidance and regulatory engagement.

This session is delivered in partnership with Juniper.

Speakers:

• Sudheer Matta, VP products, Juniper Networks
• Mark Silis, vice president for information systems and technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Jamie Pitchforth, Q&A support, Juniper
• Jan Van De Lear, Q&A support, Juniper

When the leadership team left Cisco to start Mist, they did so with the conviction that AI and machine learning were imperative to answering the questions they had seen posed time and time again.

Sudheer Matta, representing this group of visionaries will explain how the modern cloud will underpin the network for the next decade. He will explain how Juniper has finally solved the puzzles that have challenged the higher education community for many years.

Joining Sudheer will be Mark Silis to share his own experience with these demands and how MIT reacted to challenges raised by the global pandemic by partnering with Juniper Mist to implement a solution of nearly 10,000 devices in less than four months.

This session is delivered in partnership with Efficient IP.

Speaker: Ed Daniel, presales engineer, Efficient IP.

IT initiatives linked with digital transformation, such as cloud, zero-trust, IoT and 5G, have increased complexity of network management as well as security risks. For universities, huge volumes of users and devices connecting to campus infrastructure demands performant and resilient core network services.

DDI (DNS-DHCP-IPAM) is a foundation for strategic initiatives, so should be integrated to orchestration processes to bring true end-to-end automation, security and control. DNS can bring a first line of defense against data theft, DDoS and other threats for users, BYoD and IoT. High-performance DHCP enables mass volumes of users to roam between campus areas. IPAM reduces IP resource management complexity, by providing a single source of truth data repository for zero touch operations and helping transition towards IPv6.

In this session, learn how a smart DDI helps you simplify and secure your network operations.

This session is delivered in partnership with Switchshop.

Speakers:

• Paul Richards, Switchshop
• Matt Hawkins, Switchshop

SLAs don’t include the user experience, and user feedback doesn’t include context. In a multivendor network, how do you troubleshoot application usage issues?

What if user feedback scoring included network analytics and a helpful cloud interface? We’ll show you how spot, troubleshoot and resolve network issues fast and deliver an assured service, that makes you smile.

This session is delivered in partnership with Aruba.

Speaker: Chris Linzell, cloud solutions business development, Aruba

During the session, Chris will cover:

• Aruba Centrals part in Aruba Edge Service Platform (ESP)
• What Aruba Centrals AIOps is
• How Aruba Centrals AIOps can make your life easier
• See how Aruba can ensure a great end user experience
• Opportunity for your questions with a Q&A

This session is delivered in partnership with Fortinet.

Speaker: David Nicoll, Forinet

Speakers:

• Alex Goffe, head of operations and infrastructure information and digital service, Keele University
• Gary Lloyd, infrastructure manager, information and digital service, Keele University

Lockdown 2020 saw two of the biggest transformational Infrastructure projects begin at the university - the move to the cloud (AWS) from on-premises data centres and the move from Google Apps for Education to Office365 as part of the university digital transformation. This talk will go over why, how, when and all the highs and lows so far.

Speakers:

• Alison Phillips, director of digital transformation, Staffordshire University
• Rob Oakes, digital solutions manager, Staffordshire University

In this session, Alison and Rob will talk through Staffordshire's journey to the Azure cloud. They'll cover why they did this, how they did this, what they achieved and how this kickstarted their 2030 vision and digital strategy.

In this session we will present three software platforms that are being developed in the GÉANT GN4-3 project. This includes the two production level tools, NMaaS and WiFiMon, and the RARE open source routing platform which is under development but already deployed in some production environments.

The NMaaS tools provide a means for organisations to run network management and monitoring tools that are provided and hosted by either GeEANT or (where supported) by their NREN. WiFiMon provides a way to blend crowd-sourced WiFi performance measurements with those taken by small form factor (RPi) devices. The RARE platform provides an open source NOS (using FreeRouter) that can run on a variety of white box hardware, and supports either a P4 or DPDK driven data plane.

RARE - Router for Academia, Research and Education

Speaker: Jordi Ortiz, researcher and associate lecturer, University of Murcia.

Network management as a service

Speaker: Łukasz Lopatowski, RENATER.

WiFiMon - a system for wifi network performance monitoring

Speaker: Pavle Vuletić, associate professor, Universtiy of Belgrade, School of Electrical Engineering.

This session is delivered in partnership with Juniper.

Speakers:

• Bob Friday, VP / CTO at Mist, a Juniper Company
• Jamie Pitchforth, Q&A support, Juniper
• Jan Van De Lear, Q&A support, Juniper

Co-founder and godfather of wireless, the man behind Cisco Airespace and the man behind Mist Systems. Industry recognised “mover and shaker” Bob Friday will talk through the evolution of wireless and why modern cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning has enabled "Juniper Driven by Mist AI” to overtake Cisco and Aruba in the 2020 Gartner MQ for wired and wireless.

Bob will share his vision of the future and how the infrastructure for the next 10 years will lead us to a self-driving self-healing autonomous network.

Speaker: David Conway, deputy technical director and head of IT and Daniel Wilson, solutions analyst - both, University of Sunderland.

The journey to cloud isn't easy and committing to those first steps is quite often the most difficult. This presentation will briefly outline the journey University of Sunderland has started.

They will discuss why they wanted to move to cloud, how they financially costed cloud, the development of the plan, the people they needed and how they have overcome some of the challenges.

Speakers:

• Renyk de’Vandre, network operations manager, University of Birmingham
• Sushma Sandaran, IT programme manager, University of Leeds

This session will cover:

• The challenges of delivering teaching and learning to students in China and around the world
• Member experiences of using the Jisc global access framework
• Implementing a technical solution to provide secure access to content on VLE
• Managing internal stakeholders and encouraging uptake - student feedback and usage

A study on the implementation of bring your own device (BYOD)

Speaker: Rob Blagden, director of libraries, technology and information, University of Gloucester.

Research on the implementation of BYOD within the public sector (including NHS) revealed a range of cultural and policy lessons which could benefit any project, such as:

• A 'people first' approach improves engagement and success
• A lack of policy can leave your organisation (and people) exposed
• After implementation audit and monitoring rarely takes place as planned

Integrating OpenRoaming with eduroam in the UK

Speaker: Mark O'Leary, head of network access, Jisc.

Jisc is a member of the wireless broadband alliance (WBA) which is spearheading the development of OpenRoam, a new standard for roaming connectivity. Along with colleagues in Europe, we are looking at ways to provide eduroam account holders with access to the OpenRoam footprint without compromising the privacy and security that eduroam delivers.

Speaker: Simon Dix, Azure solutions achitect, Jisc

Jisc cloud solution specialist Simon discusses the benefits and challenges of implementation, with a focus on remote working, collaboration and communication.

Speaker: Colm Blake, cloud solutions consultant, Jisc

Colm, a cloud consultant, will talk about protecting your data using the native toolset of Microsoft 365. Identifying key areas where, with a little forethought you can make your information secure, durable, and resilient to malware. And… when you might need to have a backup.

This session is delivered in partnership with Juniper.

Speakers:

• Neil Goddard, technical expert, Juniper Networks
• Jamie Pitchforth, Q&A support, Juniper
• Jan Van De Lear, Q&A support, Juniper

Juniper Mist will be conducting a live demonstration illustrating just how quickly, efficiently and easily a full wired and wireless network can be configured and deployed.

Harnessing the power of the 100% API programmable platform, a multi-site network will be deployed, using the ethos that “machines should program machines” removing the chance of human errors. Various user onboarding will be shown covering secure eduroam, guest and Residential Network users, the latter leveraging Juniper Mist’s Multi-Pre-Shared Key and Personal WLAN isolation capabilities. The power of the user experience driven network will be illustrated through the use of service level expectations and Mist’s A.I. interactive assistant which combine to proactively highlight issues and derive root causes and recommended fixes before users start raising trouble tickets.

Finally a comprehensive set of location services will be introduced, taking advantage of Juniper Mist’s unique virtual bluetooth capabilities to deliver industry leading location accuracy with easy of deployment and automatic calibration, all powered by Mist APs.

This session is delivered in partnership with WatchGuard Technologies.

Speaker: Martin Lethbridge, senior sales engineer, WatchGuard Technologies

The cyber-threat landscape continues to evolve. Each year, attackers add new techniques and tactics to their arsenal, increasing their ability to evade detection and attack your systems. In this session we will discuss the top cyber security threats organisations are facing in 2021 and how to defend against them, including:

• The 2021 cyber threat landscape and best practice advice to defend against today’s security threats
• Best practice advice for implementing a multi-layered approach to cybersecurity for the education sector

Speaker: Jeremy Sharp, Janet chief technology officer, Jisc.

• Download a transcript of Ahmed's keynote talk (.docx)

Speaker: Ahmed Beneallegue, networks and security team leader, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

This session will explore the challenges of moving a data centre from the UK (Reading) to Italy (Bologna).

Ahmed will cover the reasons for the move, the challenges of coordinating the delivery of the telecommunications with the availability of the new data centre and the challenges of moving the data. Plus testing the final outcome and how COVID-19 helped/hindered the process.

Speaker: Renyk de'Vandre, network development manager, University of Birmingham.

This session will explore the impact of COVID on technical teams, turning barriers into opportunities and lessons learned from the new way of working. It will look at the unforeseen benefits and taking advantage of them, with practical examples of turning an obstacle into an opportunity.

Speaker: Nick Skelton, consultant, University of Reading.

This session will look back over three decades of networking, starting from the first IP traffic on Janet in 1991 and consider some of the trends in that time. Attendees will hear some predictions for the technologies and skills we will need: identity, federation and access management, negotiation, collaboration and trust-building.

This session is delivered in partnership with Tanium D3.

Speakers:

• Mark Wantling, CIO, University of Salford
• Paul Jackson, RVP for public sector, Tanium

Join Mark Wantling, CIO of the University of Salford, to discuss the importance of asset visibility and how once mastered, it enables universities to quickly respond to the change in treat landscape (be that nation-states or ransomware) as well as provide a more stable and available IT environment.

DDoS mitigation at Kingston University

Speaker: Ravi Jeyanolipavan, information security manager, Kingston University.

This session will cover the business impact of DDoS attacks, root cause challenges and the benefit of using critical services protection.

DDoS protection and critical services

Speaker: Alex Harding, head of IT services, Runshaw College.

A discussion around the benefits of critical services protection.

DDoS attacks on Janet

Speaker: Ben Crowther, senior security analyst, Jisc.

Ben will give an update on DDoS attack trends, how COVID-19 affected DDoS attacks on Janet and details about critical services protection.

This session is delivered in partnership with Infoblox.

Speaker: Steven Tee, principal security architect, Infoblox.

Network infrastructure management is changing. Universities are adopting SaaS/Office 365, public, hybrid and multi-cloud, SD-WAN and IoT technologies.

Now, more than ever, visibility, discovery, automation and control are essential. Yet many Microsoft and Linux network professionals face siloed data, visibility issues, IP conflicts, DHCP and network outages, manual data, spreadsheets and disparate systems on-premises and in the hybrid-cloud.

Authoritative IP address management (IPAM), discovery, automation and ecosystem integration can answer these challenges. Join Infoblox experts who will explain how to:

• Gain visibility and avoid IP address conflicts across infrastructure, Microsoft and hybrid cloud environments
• Automatically discover network assets and manage troubleshooting, component syncing and provisioning
• Realise time and process savings through cross-team collaboration and automation
• Engage ecosystem integrations with leading security vendors for deep threat intel and remediation
• Access near-real-time and historical data, support audits, see key metrics and forecast IPAM resource needs

This session is delivered in partnership with Aruba.

Speaker: John Martin, systems engineer, Aruba.

In this session, John will cover:

• Centralised policy management
• Integrated with role-based policy access control
• Dynamic segmentation
• Automated device discovery, profiling

This session is delivered in partnership with Mimecast.

Speaker: Carl Wearn, head of e-crime and cyber investigation, Mimecast.

Topics Carl will cover includes:

• Current threat landscape reviewed globally in relation to education
• Wider global trends identified
• How the pandemic has altered the threat landscape
• State of ransomware reviewed
• Future threats of concern detailed

Paul Knee, security specialist, Jisc cyber team.

The session is about tools, techniques and methods to harden your Microsoft Active Directories and PowerShell to reduce some of the cyber threats seen in education and research over HE in the past 18 months.

We will look at some tools and discuss best practices that can be easily implemented to improve your Active Directories.

Speakers:

• Jon Hofgartner, director of education technology, Weston College
• Simon Farr, director of innovation, Jisc

Using digital technology to amplify ‘the human factor’ in teaching might seem counter-intuitive, but using tech in the right way can break down barriers and help educators facilitate learning. It’s all in the design, implementation and infrastructure.

We’ve tried to make our virtual classroom as straightforward as possible, so nobody needs a technical degree to work it. In this talk we discuss how the infrastructure works to make it a reality.

This session is delivered in partnership with Tanium D3.

Speakers:

• Darren Blake, Tanium
• Paul Jackon, Tanium

More details coming soon.

Speakers:

• Adam Snook, technical consultant, Jisc
• Stacey Pattie, senior implementation specialist, Jisc

In this session, Adam will explain how the OpenAthens team brings its 25 years of single sign-on knowledge and expertise to help IT teams and organisations improve user experience. Stacey will then outline the team’s experiences of managing identity software migrations and upgrades, and how this benefits members.

Speakers:

• Andy Powell, Cloud CTO, Jisc
• Nick Skelton, consultant, University of Reading
• Renyk de'Vandre, network development manager, University of Birmingham
• Alex Harding, head of IT services, Runshaw College
• Tim Chown, network development manager, Jisc

This is your opportunity to ask questions to our expert panelists on any of the topics that have been covered over the three days.

Our panelists will be reflecting on key learnings from Networkshop49 and will be answering questions submitted live by delegates in the Q&A.

Speakers:

• Jon Hunt, cyber security service delivery manager, Jisc
• Laura Pooley, information security officer, Jisc

This is a hands-on practical workshop which will outline the current phishing threats and give practical advice on what to watch out for.