Meet the 2021 MANRS Ambassadors

Join us in welcoming five respected industry leaders as this year’s MANRS Ambassadors in the areas of training, research, and policy.

Steven Wallace (Internet2), Rogério Muhate (MoRENet), Fredrik Korsbäck (Amazon Web Services), Zobair Khan (Fiber@Home), and Ram Krishna Pariyar (Subisu Cablenet) come from diverse backgrounds and share a strong commitment to securing the global Internet routing system.

They are representatives from current MANRS participants in the network operator, Internet exchange point, and content delivery network (CDN) and cloud provider programs, and have been selected by the MANRS Ambassadors Selection Committee, comprised of representatives from the MANRS Advisory Group.

In the coming months, they will be working closely with MANRS Fellows (to be announced on Apr 3), providing mentorship and guidance to accelerate progress towards a secure Internet routing system. Together, the two groups will train diverse communities on good routing practices, analyse routing incidents, research ways to secure routing, and survey the global policy landscape.

Two of the 2021 Ambassadors – Zobair Khan and Ram Krishna Pariyar – served as MANRS Fellows last year and we are delighted to see them back and eager to make a bigger impact.

This is the second year we are running the Ambassador and Fellowship Program following the success in 2020. Despite initial setbacks due to the COVID-19 pandemic, restricting mobility and face-to-face interactions, the ingenuity and passion of four Ambassadors and 13 Fellows resulted in the organisation of 58 workshops reaching over 1,400 network operators in 17 different countries across all continents.

The Ambassadors will receive a monthly stipend of US$1,500 for up to eight months. The Internet Society supports this program as part of its work to reduce common routing threats and establish norms for network operations. 

We look forward to more exciting initiatives from the Ambassadors this year to further strengthen routing security and grow the MANRS community. Stay tuned for our announcement on the 2021 MANRS Fellows and more!

Training

Rogério Muhate plays multiple roles at the Mozambique Research and Education Network (MoRENet) – he is the Systems and Applications Manager, is part of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) implementation group, and teaches Computer Network Administration and preparation for Huawei certification at the MoRENet Academy. He has several certifications and training in Computer Networks and is a University Professor of Computer and Systems Network.

Zobair Khan has been working at Fiber@Home in Bangladesh since 2010 with responsibilities in capacity planning, upstream coordination and troubleshooting. He started his career with Transmission Network and previously worked with Cisco, Huawei, Infinera, Juniper, LS Cable and Tejas. He is an active participant of various network operator groups (NOGs), including bdNOG. He is a Community Trainer of APNIC since 2018 and a MANRS Training Fellow in 2020.

Fredrik Korsbäck is the Senior Technical Business Developer at Amazon Web Services (AWS), based in Sweden. He is working with peering, routing and BGP for the AWS Global Network, and is recognised in the routing tables as AS16509. He is passionate about routing security, route control and development of the BGP protocol to strengthen the capabilities of the very core of the Internet.

Research

Steven Wallace is the Enterprise Network Architect at Indiana University (USA), and the Cybersecurity Architect at Internet2. His profession and avocation focus on computer networking, cybersecurity and the risks inherent in information technology. For over 30 years, he has contributed to the design, implementation and operation of Indiana University’s networks. He has also contributed to the network engineering efforts that built and operated the first version of the Internet2 backbone known as Abilene.

Policy

Ram Krishna Pariyar is the Senior Manager in R&D IP Engineering at Subisu Cablenet, Nepal since 2008. Prior to joining Subisu, he worked at Prime College as Cisco Academy Instructor and System Administrator for six years. He also served as Training Coordinator for the Internet Society Nepal Chapter. He has 18 years of operational and academic experience in routing, switching and network security. He is an ICANN SSR2 Review Team Member and a MANRS Training Fellow in 2020.