General information

At the occasions of its 10th anniversary, CESNET decided to organise an international research conference. This way, we intend to start a tradition of regular (annual or bi-annual) conferences concentrating on advances in high-speed communication technologies, Grids, related middleware, and their sophisticated applications.

The CESNET association was established on 6th March 1996 by universities, colleges and the Czech Academy of Sciences with the aim of building and developing the national broadband computer network for science, research and education. From the very beginning of its existence, CESNET is the leading organization in research and development in the field of high-speed networking and communication technologies in the Czech Republic. It quickly established itself at an international level and the CESNET specialists got involved in international research projects targeting networking and communication technologies and they also participate in Grid and network application related projects. Nowadays, CESNET is building and developing the CESNET2 national gigabit research network, based predominantly on optical technology, and is also developing national Grid. CESNET is the representative of the Czech Republic in the project to build the GEANT2 pan-European network, in the EGEE project to build the pan-European Grid infrastructure, and in other international activities.

Conference topics

Optical networks

Optical fibres and free space optics have been used for a long time, but we are still very far from optimal implementations of optical networks. Conference is oriented on work in deployment of advanced optical networks in production, wide-area experimental environment or laboratory environments, as well as on theoretical results in optical transmission. We pay special attention to cost-effective technologically advanced facilities which should enable extending the optical networks and their gradual deployment also in developing countries and to activities helping suppression of digital divide worldwide.

A more detailed and non-exhaustive list of topics includes:

• design and deployment of optical and opto-electronic networks
• optical and opto-electronic wide-area, metropolitan and local area networks
• network elements procurement, acquiring suitable optical fibres, equipment multi sourcing, equipment inter-operation, network elements integration services
• design kits of transmission equipment and solution for optical networks design, FPGA applications in optical networks, experimental and prototype results
• free space optical transmission at speeds of 100 Mbps and more for the first mile, microwave backup
• optical control plane issues and signaling protocols.

IPv6

IPv6 has been around for quite some time but has not reached the critical mass of Internet users yet. Whilst it may be argued that a real breakthrough can only be expected in connection with the long-promised wave of IP-enabled communication devices and appliances, there are certainly cases where IPv6 gives the user and/or network administrator an edge over IPv4 and sometimes also brings new challenges. The IPv6 session will concentrate on creative contributions to the IPv6 state-of-the-art. A non-exhaustive list of interesting topics includes:

• advances in mobile IPv6
• IPv6 multicast
• stateless and stateful auto-configuration
• DNS administration and security
• IPv6 applications

Network middleware

The notion of network middleware has evolved from network-provided services oriented towards the operation of the network itself, to a set of services integrated into a network to facilitate inter-domain user and application collaboration. Current activities in the area aim at building an infrastructure to create and support inter-domain federations.

The network middleware session will concentrate on both technical and organizational aspect of building federations for international educational and research community in the following areas:

• authentication and authorization infrastructures
• federation policies
• using applications and resources in federated environments

Monitoring

Monitoring is traditionally understood as a necessary and important part of contemporary advanced network management and administration. As the networks, their services and applications are growing together it becomes a prerequisite of efficient sources usage in general terms and even a necessity for establishing and functionality of some services (E2E QoS, Grids, multimedia applications, ...).

The monitoring session will concentrate on creative contributions in two areas:

• Monitoring as an instrument of support and management (infrastructure, traffic, sources administration and control, security and incidents handling, AAA, performance, monitoring of specific components and services used in infrastructures like Grids, E2E services and others).
• Monitoring as a subject of research – creative monitoring methods and techniques, theoretical studies (sampling, aggregations, indirect methods, statistical methods, others), large scale monitoring infrastructures and their organization (hierarchical, P2P, ...).

Grids

Computers, storage depots, sensors, instruments and also people connected through the high performance network form a new quality – the Grid. Its large scale heterogeneous nature poses new challenges both to research in this area and to development of Grid systems and tools. Contemporary Grids provide not only computing power, but they have distinct data, information, and knowledge layers, where the focus is on advanced data and information manipulation and processing. Taking network as the basic building block, Grid development is becoming more tightly coupled with advanced networks and influence them.

The Grid session will look especially to Grid development and deployment, interaction between Grids and network architectures, Grid tools and user support systems, and advanced use of Grids.

Applications

One of the main purposes of high performance and optical networks is to provide basic transport support for new kinds of applications. Diverse areas of human activities can benefit from the high performance and low latency of contemporary computer networks, diminishing physical distances and creating unprecedented illusion of augmented or fully virtual reality.

The application session will concentrate on novel use of high performance networks in the followign areas:

• e-health (advanced telemedicine applications, telediagnosis, processing of medical data, ...)
• collaborative environments
• multimedia

Conference language

The conference language is English.