We are excited to announce the CHI-NOG 11 agenda. With the conference coming up we have a great list of presentations with spectacular speakers bringing our community together. This year’s program focuses mainly on network automation, but also has very unique networking topics. Our keynote features network architecture of a quantum optical network called Illinois Express Quantum Metropolitan Area Network (IEQNET). Chicago is home to the IEQNET where exciting research is being done on developing the quantum networking technologies.

Other topics include automation of peering, programming of your RIB, network observability, routing security (RPKI), blockchain in networking and WISP network architectures, among other great topics.

We invite you to take a closer look at our agenda below and join us on May 11th. Please register at https://chinog.org/chi-nog-11/registration/

Schedule

StartEndDurationPresentationSpeaker
8:00:00 AM9:00:00 AM1:00Registration / Breakfast
9:00:00 AM9:15:00 AM0:15:00Opening Remarks & Diamond Sponsor (Villa Tech)Tom Kacprzynski and Miguel Villarreal
9:15:00 AM9:45:00 AM0:30:00Design and Implementation of the Illinois Express Quantum Metropolitan Area Network (slides)Joaquin Chung
9:45:00 AM10:15:00 AM0:30:00Seeing the Light: How Optical Transceiver Analytics Can Illuminate Your Data (slides)Javier Antich
10:15:00 AM10:45:00 AM0:30:00Break 1
10:45:00 AM11:15:00 AM0:30:00gRIBI – an open interface for programming your RIB (slides)Steve Ulrich
11:15:00 AM11:45:00 AM0:30:00Stand Up for Your Routes! Using the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) (slides)Brad Gorman
11:45:00 AM12:15:00 PM0:30:00Blockchain in Networking (slides)Mike McBride
12:15:00 PM1:45:00 PM1:30:00Lunch
1:45:00 PM2:15:00 PM0:30:00Peering Automation Then and Now (slides)Matt Griswold
2:15:00 PM2:45:00 PM0:30:00A Small Data Approach to Flow Analysis (slides)Shannon Weyrick
2:45:00 PM3:15:00 PM0:30:00Documentation, Automation, Verification, Oh my! (slides)Dan Kelcher
3:15:00 PM3:45:00 PM0:30:00Break 2
3:45:00 PM4:15:00 PM0:30:00WISP Network Practices and Technologies (slides)Justin Wilson
4:15:00 PM4:45:00 PM0:30:00Simplifying Network Observability Device Onboarding with Nautobot (slides)Nate Gotz
4:45:00 PM5:00:00 PM0:15:00Closing Remark – Survey
5:00:00 PM5:30:00 PM0:30:00Break
5:30:00 PM7:30:00 PM2:00:00Social Event / Food & Drinks / Raffle

Presentations

Design and Implementation of the Illinois Express Quantum Metropolitan Area Network by Joaquin Chung
gRIBI – an open interface for programming your RIB by Steve Ulrich
Blockchain in Networking by Mike McBride
Stand Up for Your Routes! Using the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) by Brad Gorman
Seeing the Light: How Optical Transceiver Analytics Can Illuminate Your Data by Javier Antich
Peering Automation Then and Now by Matt Griswold
WISP Network Practices and Technologies by Justin Wilson
Simplifying Network Observability Device Onboarding with Nautobot by Nate Gotz
Documentation, Automation, Verification, Oh my! by Dan Kelcher
A Small Data Approach to Flow Analysis by Shannon Weyrick

Details

PresentationDescriptionSpeaker
Design and Implementation of the Illinois Express Quantum Metropolitan Area Network by Joaquin ChungThe Illinois Express Quantum Network (IEQNET) is a program to realize metropolitan-scale quantum networking over deployed optical fiber using currently available technology. IEQNET consists of multiple sites that are geographically dispersed in the Chicago metropolitan area. Each site has one or more quantum nodes (Q-Nodes) representing the communication parties in a quantum network. Q-Nodes generate or measure quantum signals such as entangled photons and communicate the measurement results via standard classical signals and conventional networking processes. The entangled photons in IEQNET nodes are generated at multiple wavelengths and are selectively distributed to the desired users via transparent optical switches.

In this talk I will describe the network architecture of IEQNET, including the Internet-inspired layered hierarchy that leverages software-defined networking (SDN) technology to perform traditional wavelength routing and assignment between the Q-Nodes. Specifically, SDN decouples the control and data planes, with the control plane being entirely implemented in the classical domain. I will also discuss the IEQNET processes that address issues associated with synchronization, calibration, network monitoring, and scheduling.
Joaquin Chung is a research scientist in computer networking and system software at the University of Chicago and he holds a joint appointment at the Data Science and Learning Division at Argonne National Laboratory. He received both his B.S. in Electronics and Communications Engineering (2007) and his M.Sc. in Communication Systems Engineering with Emphasis in Data Networks (2013) from University of Panama, Panama. He received his Ph.D in Electrical and Computer Engineering under the supervision of Dr. Henry Owen and Dr. Russ Clark at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA in December 2017. He is a Fulbright alumn, an IEEE senior member, and an ACM member. His research interests include software-defined networking, advanced wireless communications, edge computing, and quantum communication networks.
gRIBI – an open interface for programming your RIB by Steve UlrichgRIBI (gRPC RIB Interface)is an open service that enables operators to inject and query entries into a routers RIB. This provides operators with greater flexibility than engaging in novel BGP or other routing tricks while not requiring the operator to be involved in the minutiae associated with lower-level network programing interfaces such as OpenFlow of P4. Operators can leverage the best of both worlds.

This presentation will explore the rationale and objectives for its development, provide comparative analysis of gRIBI vs. other mechanisms and provide a demonstration of the capabilities of the protocol and service.
Steve ulrich is a networking dork in the cloud group at arista networks. He spends his time working with some of arista’s largest customers to deploy new networking technologies in the never-ending pursuit of driving down the cost to move a bit and make networks more programmable.

Before Arista, steve spent four years at juniper networks in the cloud vertical pushing on similar ropes, and before juniper, he spent 13 years as yet another networking dork at Cisco systems working with Cisco’s cloud operators and various north american service providers.

Steve has presented at IETF, NANOG (where he’s currently serving on the election and
program committees) as well as various regional NOGs (including CHI-NOG).
Blockchain in Networking by Mike McBrideDistributed Ledgers, such as Blockchain, are being deployed today for supply chain use cases. As much as networking engineers love to deride blockchain, it is here and we need to understand how to best keep them off our network or how to embrace the technology. How will distributed ledgers impact networking? How are standards organizations developing distributed ledger architectures? Could blockchain be used to further secure routing protocols such as BGP? In this presentation, the distributed ledger standards landscape will be discussed along with use cases and a few possibilities for networking.Mike has been involved in network standardization and architecture for 30 years while working at Cisco, Ericsson and Futurewei. He has chaired an IETF WG for two decades. He has spoken at numerous events around the world. Mike specifically works on standardizing multicast routing protocols, customer engagements and researching Blockchain in networking including it’s impact on the network.
Stand Up for Your Routes! Using the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) by Brad GormanIt’s never a good time for your routes to be hijacked. Whether by human error or deliberate action of a bad actor, the mis-configuration of an Internet connected device could result in a disruption of connectivity, even financial loss for your company. Would you like to limit your exposure to hijacks? Find out how easy it is to strengthen your routing security by using the opt-in RPKI services at ARIN.Brad Gorman is the Sr Product Owner, Routing Security at ARIN and is the community resource for RPKI, IRR and other similar topics that impact routing security within the ARIN region, and the greater internet ecosystem. I represent ARIN at the other RIRs in the RPKI community, at the IETF, and industry conferences and meetings.

He has worked in the Internet community since the mid-1990’s, as a network engineer at service providers like America Online, Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications, and Juniper Networks. I also have experience as the peering coordinator for Verisign, and satellite Internet provider OneWeb.
Seeing the Light: How Optical Transceiver Analytics Can Illuminate Your Data by Javier AntichOptical Transceivers used to be simply a replaceable component of a network device, but progressively they have become critical elements, disaggregated from the network device vendor, and responsible for a sizeable portion of the network cost. In this presentation we will share capabilities and strategies to manage your optical transceiver installed base and have the right level of visibility that enables the right technology, vendor or deployment decisions to maximize your network quality.
Javier Antich has been in the Networking Industry for 25 years. He holds a BS Degree in Telecommunication Engineering from the ETSIT at the Polytechnic University in Valencia, Executive MBA at the IE Business School, and Data Science and Deep Learning master’s degree from the Madrid Institute of IoT.  Javier is an accomplished author of the best-selling book “Machine Learning for Network and Cloud Engineers”.

He is currently Product Manager at Selector Software. Previously, he was responsible for Nokia NSP long-term product strategy and product management lead for the NSP Platform, Mediation, and Automation frameworks. Before joining Nokia, Javier was Sr. Director PLM in the Automated WAN Solutions team at Juniper, focused on Automation, Programmability, Telemetry & Analytics. Before that, he witnessed the rise of the Carrier/Metro Ethernet market at Riverstone Networks as Principal Systems Engineer
Peering Automation Then and Now by Matt GriswoldThis talk will share what I’ve learned both from personal experience as well as through dozens of recent interviews with IX operators and interconnection engineers over the past several months. Including common challenges and best practices.

The highlight of the talk will be announcing and describing open source automation tools built to make interconnection and BGP easier for everyone. Focusing on PeerCtl, which is built to automate the most common and problematic tasks involved in interconnecting an AS; from bilateral and multilateral peering to PNI and also transit connections. I will talk about the new public peering portal which will allow others to peer with you via a new peering automation API that’s in the works.

Code for PeerCtl (along with several other tools) is available on GitHub: https://github.com/fullctl
Matt Griswold is a technology entrepreneur who has been automating deployments since the twentieth century. He is currently focusing his energy on FullCtl, an open source automation platform.

Mr. Griswold is well-known for his expertise in coding and has written code for a variety of applications from trading algorithms to protocol
stacks. He is passionate about peering and interconnection and has volunteered for many organizations, including Euro-IX, NANOG, OIX and PeeringDB.
WISP Network Practices and Technologies by Justin WilsonGive a brief overview of what mosts Wireless ISPs (WISPs) are doing for routing, equipment, and emerging technologies.Justin Wilson had been in the ISP industry for more than 25 years. He started out in the dark days of 300 baud modems, dial-up, and one way cable modems. He has been in the Wireless ISP industry since 2003 as an owner/operator, tower climber, and consultant since 2008. These days Justin manages and builds hybrid fiber and wireless networks in Indiana and Texas. Justin is also a managing partner at Fiber Data Internet Exchange (FD-IX)

Justin is an avid G.I. Joe collector and spends his free-time on various hobbies and pursuits. Justin is a dog parent to a year and a half old Rottweiler named Switch. 
Simplifying Network Observability Device Onboarding with Nautobot by Nate GotzThe TPG (Telegraf, Prometheus, Grafana) Telemetry stack has become a popular choice for monitoring network devices with SNMP and GNMI, but one of the major pain points keeping organizations on legacy monitoring systems is device onboarding and metrics collection. Adding new devices to the TPG stack can be a time consuming and difficult process coming from an environment where all you needed was an IP address and an SNMP community string. Automating the Telegraf configuration generation with Nautobot helps ensure device monitoring over the full lifecycle of the device from onboarding to decommissioning. Nautobot can also be leveraged to add/remove new device metrics.

We will discuss the TPG architecture and how you can use an existing Nautobot inventory to automate the device monitoring lifecycle.
Nate is a Senior Network Automation Consultant with Network to Code. Previously, Nate was a Consulting Network Architect where he designed, automated, and built ISPs. He has over a decade of networking experience building and automating ISP and utility networks.
Documentation, Automation, Verification, Oh my! by Dan KelcherBy now, hopefully, everyone knows about network automation. However, some people still struggle with how to go about automating their network. There are two key areas that are often overlooked in the automation conversations. The first being that you need to know what you have before you can automate it. The second is being able to verify that the automated process had the desired impact.

State = Documentation. What’s out there, and how is it configured?
Intent = Automation. What is the desired end state, and how does it get there?
Assurance = Verification. Does the state match the intent?

This presentation will cover why those three areas are important, and how that helps build out closed-loop automation.
Dan Kelcher has been in the IT field for over 20 years and currently is a Solution Architect with IP Fabric. Outside of the day job, he’s a Cisco Champion, CompTIA SME, Tech Field Day delegate, and he’s taught several IT courses. He has an odd hobby of taking IT exams and has collected over 30 certifications, including CISSP, three VCPs, two CCNPs, a handful from Microsoft, and even one from Citrix. When he’s not studying or taking exams, he enjoys talking about technology. He’s co-hosted dozens of Cisco Champions Radio podcasts, presented at conferences, and has been known to talk even when nobody else is around.
A Small Data Approach to Flow Analysis by Shannon WeyrickNetwork operators need deep visibility into their network traffic usage patterns to efficiently run their businesses. Analysis of flow data from network devices has historically been a common and practical approach to obtaining this insight, but as network (and the corresponding flow data) volumes grow, it has increasingly led to overwhelming volumes of data to analyze and prohibitive storage and processing costs. Orb (https://orb.community) is a free and open source observability solution that is designed to address the challenges of monitoring busy networks from distributed vantage points. It can analyze flow data (as well as packet capture, dnstap and other inputs), combining deep traffic analysis with data sketch algorithms to efficiently extract key metrics directly at the edge. Fleet management capabilities enable dynamic policy configuration across a broad deployment of agents to tailor the analysis to your precise observability needs. The result is lightweight time series metrics, reconfigurable in real time, that plug into modern observability stacks using OpenTelemetry.Shannon Weyrick is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of NetBox Labs. A veteran of internet infrastructure for over 25 years, Shannon is an accomplished technical architect, developer, and leader. Prior to NetBox Labs, he was the first employee at NS1 (acquired by IBM in 2023), where he led and built out both technology and teams for nine years. He is the creator of the open source Orb Network Observability platform and enjoys speaking at industry conferences.