South African network operators group to host conference

The South African Network Operators Group (ZANOG) will host a multi-day networking conference with three international guest speakers at the uMhlanga Coastlands Hotel, north of Durban, on Wednesday April 23 and Thursday April 24.

ZANOG was started in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) in 2017, as a dedicated space for internet network operators to connect, share knowledge, collaborate and discuss collective challenges. The thriving organisation rapidly grew to encompass the entire country hosting several gatherings around the country each year.

At the conference later this month there will be over 20 presentations and a panel discussion over the two days. There will be a variety of local SA masterminds and informative addresses by American internet expert Jim Cowie, Dutch specialist Pim van Pelt, as well as contributions by Sudanese expert, Sara Alamin.

Mr Cowie is a serial entrepreneur and data scientist, with experience as a data storyteller in both the internet measurement and financial industries. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Yale University. His talk is titled Contemplating Internet History: Where Do We Go Next?

He will present an overview of the Internet History Initiative: a community effort to identify, preserve, and celebrate the datasets that document the growth of the global internet over the last quarter-century. “Mergers and acquisitions, changes of leadership and priorities, and the simple passage of time can all put institutional data collections at risk of loss. I will motivate an alternative approach that preserves Internet measurement data in century-scale storage, in order to support historians and researchers for generations to come,” said Mr Cowie.

Mr Van Pelt has a more targeted theme. He started his career as a network engineer in the Netherlands, where he worked for Intouch, Freeler and BIT. He has worked as a distinguished site reliability engineer at Google in Zurich, Switzerland since 2006.

“My focus is to explore a set of fully open source amd64 based VPP routers, from small (Atom-class, 8 Watts) through to very large (Xeon, 1 000 watts) and everything in between. Details on build, setup, load testing and operating these routers in production will illustrate the feasibility of plain off the shelf hardware,” said Mr Van Pelt.

Ms Alamin is the co-founder of the Sudan Network Operators Group (sdNOG). She is also the Interconnection Manager at PCH: an intergovernmental treaty organisation that provides operational support and security to critical internet infrastructure. She will present a talk titled Helping Sudan’s Internet Community in Difficult Times.

“The sdNOG Hosting Project is a community effort to support Sudan’s internet users during tough times. With many challenges affecting internet access and local services, it has become harder for people to stay connected and access important online resources. sdNOG used its skills and resources to provide a reliable hosting platform for websites, educational tools, and community services,” said Ms Alamin.

She will explain why they started this project, how they are using their resources, and the positive impact it has had. She will also share the challenges they faced. Ms Alamin said the goal is to show how local technical communities can come together to keep the internet running, even in difficult situations, and maybe to help or inspire others to do good things for their community.

Co-Founders of ZANOG and organisers of the ZANOG25 Conference Donald Jolley and Edrich de Lange said ZANOG continues to grow, driven by the support and dedication of the tech internet community in South Africa. 

“Whether one is based in Africa or anywhere in the world, ZANOG invites interested individuals, organisations and companies to be part of this dynamic community,” said Mr Jolley.

For more information and link to registration visit: https://nog.net.za/zanog25/