Mastering Routing Security at APRICOT 2021

One of the biggest events of the year is APRICOT, the annual Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies. This year, it offers online technical training from February 22 to 26, and the conference itself from March 1 to 4. The agenda is absolutely jam-packed with routing security tutorials and other technical training sessions.

We have been a key supporter of APRICOT over the years, and its capacity building and training programmes in particular. This partnership has helped develop the next generation of technical experts and leaders in the region.

What does this provide for the candidates? Here are some of the benefits:

• Get out of their comfort zone and meet with peers from different economies
• Share experiences with others from a similar operational background
• Learn and enhance their technical skills from some of the best in the industry
• Discuss their concern/technical issues candidly without being judged
• Return home with new and enhanced skills that will help them improve local Internet infrastructure and help them develop professionally

This year, however, we faced a real challenge: how do we provide a mechanism to continue this impactful work with travel restrictions in place and no physical events? There really is no alternative to flying people in and providing them with the unique combination of experiences that come from visiting a new place, attending a big event, meeting and interacting with their peers about operational technologies, and learning from industry leaders.

After much thought and discussions with Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) and Asia Pacific Network Operators Group (APNOG), we all agreed to offer multiple streams of virtual tutorial setup with hands-on experience that can provide a mentoring-like environment for the participants to benefit from industry experts. Thanks to NSRC for helping to arrange the training platform that allows participants to manage their own virtual machines (VMs) and enable experiential learning.

We are lucky to have wonderful partners that help spread routing security information and guidance across the globe. Our partners at APNIC, APNOG, and NSRC are working hard to make sure everyone has the knowledge and skills to make the Internet’s global routing system more secure.

This week, there are four tutorials focusing on routing security:

• BGP Deployment from NSRC
• Securing Internet Routing with RPKI from APNIC
• Network Monitoring and Management from NSRC
• MANRS Tutorial from AARNet

The tutorials are all free to attend live on Zoom, and are being recorded for future enjoyment too. Join here: https://2021.apricot.net

This is turning out to be a successful attempt to provide high level of knowledge sharing opportunity to the community.

As per one of the key trainers, Hervey Allen of NSRC: “During the past year NSRC has taught a number of online workshops and tutorials in cooperation with partners, including Internet Society. The participants in the APRICOT 2021 NMM 2.0 sessions were a great group and a pleasure to work with. They asked a bunch of insightful and interesting questions that, in my opinion, helped to make the experience more interesting and useful for everyone.”

Once the conference starts next week, the routing security information keeps going:

• APOPS1 features two presentations on RPKI from Hurricane Electric and NSRC
• APOPS2 features Geoff Huston talking about BGP in 2020
• APNIC Plenary will focus on ‘Routing Security: Present & Future’ with speakers from APNIC and Amazon Web Services
• APNIC Routing Security SIG is chaired by MANRS’ Aftab Siddiqui and covers a range of topics
• Securing Routing features two talks on BGP hijacks and RPKI in India

We’re excited to see so many great sessions on this extremely important topic. Check out the whole APRICOT agenda at https://2021.apricot.net/program/schedule-tutorial and register to take full advantage of the Zoom presentations and interactive features.

Huge thanks to the MANRS participants and partners that are helping to share and exchange information they need to make the Internet better for us all!

And, if you haven’t already, please check out the MANRS Programs and make sure your organization is meeting the requirements to join us as a Network Operator, IXP, or CDN or Cloud Provider.