In an era where technology trends are dominated by AI, cloud computing, and software development, network engineering—the backbone of our digital infrastructure—has fallen from the spotlight. This keynote addresses the critical challenge of attracting and developing the next generation of network engineers while making sure current teams remain competitive in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

Drawing from real-world experience and industry trends, we'll explore effective strategies for making network engineering appealing to young talent, demonstrate practical approaches for mentorship and skill development of early in career engineers, and discuss how to bridge the gap between classical networking fundamentals and emerging technologies. IT leaders and senior engineers will leave with actionable frameworks for talent development and concrete methods to showcase the continuing relevance and excitement of network engineering in today's technology landscape.

This presentation is about understanding one of the key frustrations of internet users—slow DNS response times—and how routing inefficiencies contribute to high latency. We’ll explore how keeping DNS traffic local can vastly help improve user experience, reduce delays, and increase security.

Using data from RIPE Atlas and measurements of AuthDNS, we’ll show how additional localised anycast points of presence help avoid unnecessary global routing, making DNS faster and more efficient.

By examining real-world measurements and discussing tools like RIPE Atlas and RIS, we’ll highlight practical steps network operators can take to optimise DNS performance and keep traffic local.

This presentation is based on this analysis by Anand Buddhdev.

This talk outlines current IETF activities on modelling, use-cases, and control of “small form factor coherent optical pluggables” inside packet devices (Routers), encapsulating all significant properties of optical pluggable. It further delves into initiatives related to use-cases driven by network operators and multi-layer multi-vendor SDN controller for such network.

Various standard organizations like IETF, OpenConfig, OIF, ITU-T, T-API, and TIP have started addressing this. The IETF's objective is to scrutinize the work of these standardization bodies, focusing on capabilities, configuration, and telemetry data of the packet over optical network to establish a comprehensive set of pluggable attributes. The goals also include various options for life cycle management of coherent pluggable in a multi-vendor multi-layer IP over DWDM networks.

We (the network operators) depend on optical stuff everywhere, that is the modern glue to stuff we run. But most of us are now running all the same kinds of signals down the optical transceivers. As part of my need to "Trust, but verify" I wanted to check my assumptions on how the signalling end of modern SFP optics worked, so join me in a adventure of sending weird signals many kilometres, and maybe set some records for the most wasteful bandwidth utilisation of optical spectrum in 2024!

BGP is the de facto inter-domain routing protocol to ensure global connectivity of the Internet. However, various reasons, such as deliberate attacks or misconfigurations, could cause BGP routing anomalies. Traditional methods for BGP routing anomaly detection require significant manual investigation of routes by network operators. Although machine learning has been applied to automate the process, prior arts typically impose significant training overhead (such as large-scale data labeling and feature crafting), and only produce uninterpretable results. To address these limitations, we present a routing anomaly detection system centering around a novel network representation learning model named BEAM. The core design of BEAM is to accurately learn the unique properties (defined as routing role) of each Autonomous System (AS) in the Internet by incorporating BGP semantics.

As a result, routing anomaly detection, given BEAM, is reduced to a matter of discovering unexpected routing role churns upon observing new route announcements. We implement a prototype of our routing anomaly detection system and extensively evaluate its performance. The experimental results, based on 18 real-world RouteViews datasets containing over 11 billion route announcement records, demonstrate that our system can detect all previously-confirmed routing anomalies, while only introducing at most five false alarms every 180 million route announcements. We also deploy our system at a large ISP, China Telecom, to perform real-world detection for one month. During the course of deployment, our system detects 497 true anomalies in the wild with an average of only 1.65 false alarms per day.

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.

It has been over 20 years since the publication of RFC 3535, and more than a decade since the introduction of key management protocols and models like NETCONF, RESTCONF, and YANG. These innovations have significantly shaped network management practices, but it is now an opportune moment to reflect on their evolution and assess how well they align with the current needs of the operator community.

This presentation delves into the outcomes of the IAB’s “Next Era of Network Management Operations” (NEMOPS) workshop held in December. It will explore the historical context of network management specifications defined by the IETF, key insights and takeaways from the workshop, and their implications for the future.

Finally, the presentation will conclude with a call to action for the APRICOT operator community, encouraging active engagement in shaping the next era of network management.

About how I tested with open source tools and tried something else while searching for a solution to one problem

A simple deck that breaks down the basic components that make up a submarine cable system.

We seen to have lost our way - some twenty years ago there was a clear common purpose that we were performing a transition to take the Internet from IPv4 to IPv6. The registry stocks of free IPv4 addresses had been depleted and the Internet was clearly running on empty. The projections of growth in digital devices were unrelenting and the introduction of mobile devices such as the iPhone increased the urgency of this transition. Only IPv6 could save the Internet.

Twenty years later we are still in transition. IPv4 remains the dominant IP protocol for the majority of the Internet's users and few if any large scale service providers are ready to move to an IPv6-only platform. It seems that we have settled down to operate a dual-stack Internet that is permanently 'in transition'. How did we end up at this unexpected place? Why has IPv4 lasted way past any rational expectation of its useful lifetime? How has the architecture Internet changed such that any urgency of this IPv6 transition has largely abated? This presentation will explore some possible answers to these questions and in so doing will raise some deeper and somewhat scarier questions about the future of public digital networks that underpin the digital world's communications needs.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the premier standards development organisation for the Internet. It makes voluntary standards that are often adopted by Internet users, network operators, and equipment vendors, and it thus helps shape the trajectory of the Internet's development. With the upcoming IETF meeting set to take place in Bangkok, the panel would spotlight the need for fostering meaningful participation from the region and especially from the operator community.

Diversity in voices is essential for creating globally relevant standards that address the unique challenges faced by different regions, and to ensure these standards meet the specific requirements of your network and make the Internet work better, active participation is crucial. While APAC’s involvement in the IETF has grown in recent years, participation remains uneven, with significant underrepresentation from certain countries and operator communities. Despite having the largest and most diverse internet user base, the region continues to lag in active participation.

This panel will explore strategies to bridge these gaps, amplify operator perspectives, and encourage broader regional engagement to ensure the Internet evolves to meet the needs of all its users.