BIRDS OF A FEATHER SESSIONS

Technology Panels, our Next Generation BOF sessions, will be moderated by Cisco senior technology leaders. Cisco experts and engineers as well as partners and customers will participate in the panels. The Technology Panels are a great way to wind down after a full day to discuss technology topics, share information and ideas, and get answers to specific questions in a relaxed setting.

Technology Panels will take place on Tuesday, December 14, from 18.30 – 20.30. You can now register for the panel of your choice through the Schedule Builder application. And once you´ve registered, please feel free to pose your question to the moderator pre-event, through our Post Registration Facility.

Seven Technology Panels are available this year:

• Data Center
• Grid Computing and the impact on Network Infrastructure
• When Network Security meets Application Security
• SP Infrastructure Security
• IP Communication Infrastructure and Voice Applications
• Next Generation Broadband
• Cisco Software Strategy
• SP Voice Infrastructure: leveraging the Cisco/Italtel Alliance

TP-001 Data Center
This panel aims to address new trends and their adoption in the Data Center: the relevance of virtualization, on demand and utility computing, the role and adoption of Clustering and Grid computing in the commercial enterprise. Are Bladeservers a short-lived fashion or are they around to stay and play a key role in the Data Center of the future? What are the operational consequences for the DC Manager when evolving to a virtualized Networked DC environment? Which technologies are most beneficial to optimize Applications - generic offloading, caching and content switching techniques or application-specific pre-processing or both? What about Security in the new DC, how to separate user communities in a virtualized DC, and in a cross-Enterprise Grid?

Customers and Partners involved: Swisscom IT, IBM

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TP-002 Grid Computing and the impact on Network Infrastructure
The term Grid Computing was introduced in 1998 by Ian Foster and David Kesselman. Their vision was that the Computational Grid provides a dependable, consistent, pervasive and inexpensive access to high-end compute capabilities - comparable to the way we all use the power grid. Grids are starting to be used today in Research environments like High-Energy Physics, Astronomy, in Medicine, Weather Forecast, but also in Financial institutions and even by Game Service Providers. Also, the EU currently puts a lot of effort on Grid Computing with projects like EGEE (see http://egee-intranet.web.cern.ch/egee-intranet/gateway.html), funded as part of the 6th framework program. This panel will discuss the impact of Grid Computing on the Network Infrastructures. Will all Networks have to be 10Gb/s or 40 Gb/s Optical based in the future to accomodate the Grid Networking requirements? Is a tight integration of network resources into the Grid middleware needed? Discuss with leading industry experts like Dr. David Foster, head of Networking at CERN, Dr. Brian Carpenter, Distinguished Engineer at IBM, former Internet Architecture Board leader and current liason from the IETF to the Global Grid Forum, Chris McGugan, globally responsible for National Research Networks at Cisco. This session is targetting Networking Architects planning Next Generation Networks in Service Provider and Enterprise environments. The session is a must for all architects of NRENs and University Networks, but also brings a lot of value to anyone planning to support Grid environments, e.g. in Finance or other industry verticals.

Customers and Partners involved: CERN, IBM

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TP-003 When Network Security meets Application Security
Network security and application security are symbiotic nowadays: each one is required and each one requires the other one. This panel will explore some areas where both are required. Items to be discussed include worms, mobile computing security, spam email, network access control and infection containment etc ...

Customers and Partners involved: Danish Bank

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TP-004 SP Infrastructure Security
Attacks against service provider networks and ever heavier attacks against data centers increasingly affect the operation of SP core networks and threaten their stability. There is a long list of meassures that can be taken to maintain the service provider infrastructure stable, as discussed in Monday's Techtorial. However, every network is different and faces different challanges. You cannot fully deploy best practices such as infrastructure ACLs? You need help understanding the risk of attacks against BGP or other protocols? In this Technology Panel a number of industry experts answer your questions and helps you understand the security risks you are facing.

Customers and partners involved: Arbor Networks

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TP-005 IP Communication Infrastructure and Voice Applications
The aim of this panel is to address issues around overall IP Telephony design as well as the incorporation of Voice Applications. Experts experienced with the design of pure IPT as well as the deployment of Contact Centre and Unified messaging solutions will be available to address your questions. The panel's expertise will also include best practices deployment models as well as creative business applications built to support Customer Care, Self Service and Unified messaging.

Customers and Partners involved: Brunnel University, IBM.

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TP-006 Next Generation Broadband
The Technology Panel on Next Generation Broadband is about the Next-Generation Network - Enhanced Services, and optimized CAPEX and OPEX: We are at the doorstep of the Next Generation Network which is about the introduction of new, profitable services AND the focus on increased efficiency of capital and operational expenditures. The residential customer's home network and the services delivered to him become a key area of focus. Much of the focus of the Service Providers in the past 10 years was on the enablement of enhanced services to the enterprise (such as VPNs) and the delivery of wireless voice and messaging services to the consumer. The services delivered to the consumers’ homes remained almost constant - voice services and best-effort Internet access. The obvious next step is to network-enable the consumers’ homes and offer rich and customized services to consumers (including but not limited to voice, video, time-shifted entertainment, gaming, home surveillance, ...), both via wireline and wireless technologies to the consumers’ homes. Several Service Providers in EMEA and world-wide have already taken these steps, and as a result achieving the highest ARPU in the industry.

Several new networking paradigms and technologies are required to support enhanced service delivery as well as CAPEX and OPEX efficiency. The new paradigm needs to offer vast scalability for high-bandwidth services, including broadcast television etc. at attractive price points as well as the capability to deliver customized services to each user.

Our discussion will be centered around the key technologies and trends which we find at the heart of the transition to the next generation, their current status of deployment, as well as the current status in the different forums and standard bodies such as ITU, MEF, IEEE, DSL-F and IETF. This includes:

• A new model of the user session for integrated delivery of voice, video and data - which is open, flexible, allows for dynamic changes, and is independent of the underlying access technology, and as such applicable to cable, DSL, fiber, or wireless environments
• Mass customization through the efficient leverage of policy based networking - controlling the user session and business service delivery
• Ethernet which is rapidly maturing and becoming the access and aggregation technology of choice for both residential and business services
• Enhanced architectural models which enable a single converged network supporting both business and residential customers
• Evolution of the home network from a single CPE to a real network
• The business perspective of Service Delivery.

Customer and Partners involved: TAZZ Networks, Accenture

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TP-007 Cisco Software Strategy
Cisco networking solutions draw on a comprehensive product range from low-end access routers through high capacity Layer 3 switches up to the recently announced CRS-1 next generation core routing system for service providers. Each solution area has a unique set of challenges and requirements which must be addressed while providing the flexibility, scaleability and manageability that network administrators demand, from the smallest enterprise business to the largest service provider. The network operating system and packet processing technologies used in the routing and switching platforms within a solution is critical to the success of the overall system. This session will provide an overview of the Cisco strategy for network operating systems and will focus on:

• Selection of generic CPU/network processors/ASIC per platform
• A need for multiple OS strategy to meet the criteria of the hardware support, scalability, services and software management of a given hardware: Cisco IOS overview (present the "family of OSs" - IOS T, IOS S and IOS XR), IOS talk, IOS XR talk, Linux talk
• Single Source code initiative - Common ground for end-to-end Services

Please note that this session will not provide any specific detail on the future Cisco IOS roadmap. This session is for Network engineers and managers looking at a global view of Cisco software strategy.

No customer and partner involved.

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TP-008 SP Voice Infrastructure: leveraging the Cisco/Italtel Alliance
Cisco Systems and its strategic alliance partner, Italtel, have announced introduction of a joint network transformation solution designed to help service providers to migrate their telephone networks to an Internet Protocol (IP) platform on which they can build flexible managed IP voice services for large enterprises and small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) as well as deploying Residential Voice Solutions.

In this session Cisco, Italtel and selected Customers will provide an overview of the Cisco-Italtel strategy for SPs and will focus on:

• Cisco-Italtel BVS (Business Voice Services)
• Residential Voice over BB (DSL /Eth)
• PSTN C4/C5 Replacement

Customers and partners involved: Italtel

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