Report from CEENet'95 Workshop in Warsaw ======================================== - Site and sponsors - Programme - Accomodation and Workshop Facilities - The Participants (Students, Lecturers and VIPs) - Results and Evaluation - Aftermath the Workshop A Report on the First CEENet Workshop on Network Technology The First CEENet Workshop on Network Technology was held from September 15 until September 25, 1995, in Warsaw, Poland. It took place in the newly erected building of the Polish- Japanese High School of Computing Techniques which provided excellent facilities and suitable infrastructure. At the opening ceremony, short speeches were given by the Vice-rector of the Polish-Japanese School Dr. Andrzej Jankowski, Professor Tomasz Hofmokl the Chairman of the CEENet, Dr. Jacek Gajewski in the name of the Organizing Committee and Professor Oliver B. Popov for the Programme Committee and the lecturers. The realization of the Workshop was made possible by the generous donations of the Soros Foundation, NATO and the State Committee for Scientific Research of Poland. Moreover, the contributions of SUN, CISCO, Siemens, Rockwell Communications Systems and the major Polish vendors such as Optimus, Inwar, Scientific, ANDRA, Bardex, ATM, the project "Internet for Schools", and NASK were essential in establishing and operating the computing and communication environment. The Polish Academic and Research Network (NASK) took care of the external connectivity and supplied additional routing devices. Most of the hardware and the software was setup by the lecturers, the Polish-Japanese School staff, the students that work in the High-school project, and NASK. The Programme of the Workshop The Workshop had two different tracks, namely National Network Management and Computational and Communication Infrastructure. Some of the lectures were presented on joint sessions for both tracks which was very well received by the attendees (these included the key note introductory and overview session, the VSAT Technology, the OSPF by CISCO, and certain aspects of network security). The total number of lecturers was fifteen, from ten different countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland, Austria, Macedonia, France, Romania, Slovenia, and USA). In September of 1994, the CEENet MC authorised Oliver B. Popov to work on the scientific program of the workshop. On the CEENet GA meeting in October of 1994 that took place in Budapest, the Programme of the Workshop was presented and approved. Moreover, a Programme Committee was elected with a specific task to work on the initial propoasal and the selection of the prospective candidates for lecturers. The Program was subsequently slightly revised at the CEENet GA meeting in March of 1995 at Bled, Slovenia. Some of the lectures such as Lars Poulsen, August Jauk, Jan Haering, Anne Villems, and Krzystof Silicki made valuable comments about the programme and significantly improved its content and overall relevance. Regrattably, there were some last minute cancelations by certain lecturers, which put additional strain on the workshop leadership. Fortunately, these diffculties were overcome via the extreme team-spirit of all the lectures teaching at the Workshop. The presence at the Inet '95 Workshop, the opportunity to work with George Sadowsky and his team, as well as to have almost daily meetings with the prospective CEENet W/shop lecturers proved to be crucial to the success of the workshop. The final programme, which was carried out at the Workshop, is the following one (T1, T2 mean Track #1 and Track #2 respectively): September 16, 1995 (Saturday) The Essence of Computer Networking (T1 & T2) Oliver B. Popov September 17, 1995 (Sunday) Building a National Network (T1) Ireneusz Neska Eugenie Staicut OSI Reference Model and Internet Protocols (T2) Valentin Cristea Building a National Network (T1) Ireneusz Neska Eugenie Staicut Interfaces (T2) Lars Poulsen Jan Haering September 18, 1995 (Monday) VSAT Communications (T1 & T2) Friedrich Krajnik Building a National Network (T1) Ireneusz Neska Eugenie Staicut Interfaces (T2) Lars Poulsen Jan Haering September 19, 1995 (Tuesday) The Network Layer (T1) Iskra Djonova - Popova The Fundamentals of TCP/IP (T2) August Jauk Eugenie Staicut Network Information Systems (T1) Anne Villems Wojtek Bogusz Volin Karagiozov Low Cost Alternatives (T2) Jan Haering Lars Poulsen September 20, 1995 (Wednesday) Network Information Systems (T1) Anne Villems Wojtek Bogusz Volin Karagiozov Low Cost Alternatives (T2) Jan Haering Lars Poulsen Network Information Systems (T1) Anne Villems Wojtek Bogusz Volin Karagiozov Low Cost Alternatives (T2) Jan Haering Lars Poulsen September 22, 1995 (Friday) Network Information Systems (T1) Anne Villems Wojtek Bogusz Volin Karagiozov The Advanced TCP/IP Concepts(T2) August Jauk Eugenie Staicut Ireneusz Neska Network Information Systems (T1) Anne Villems Wojtek Bogusz Volin Karagiozov The Advanced TCP/IP Concepts (T2) August Jauk Eugenie Staicut Ireneusz Neska September 23, 1995 (Saturday) Network Information Systems (T1) Anne Villems Wojtek Bogusz Volin Karagiozov The Advanced TCP/IP Concepts (T2) August Jauk Eugenie Staicut Ireneusz Neska Network Security (T1) Krzystof Silicki Borka Jerman-Blazic The Advanced TCP/IP Concepts (T2) August Jauk Eugenie Staicut September 24, 1995 (Sunday) Network Security Krzystof Silicki Borka Jerman-Blazic The Advanced TCP/IP Concepts August Jauk Eugenie Staicut Ireneusz Neska On Friday, September 22, 1995 the team of lectures was joined by an expert from CISCO-France , Mr. Roland Acra, the Director of the Consultants Team who spoke about the variety of routing policies and algortihms. His talk, which lasted almost three hours, was very well received and induced great interest among the attendees. There were 7 1/2 working days in total. Two excursions have been organized: a sight seeing (on Thursday, September 21st) and the visit to the Military School for Telecommunication (on Sunday, September 24th). The workshop ended with a Gala dinner, where awards, certificates and impressions from the preliminary analysis of the evaluation forms have been presented.. Accomodation and Workshop Facilities The accomodation was organized by the Congress Bureau, ORBIS Ltd in Grand Hotel (breakfast+dinner). The attendees were driven by buses to/from Polish-Japanese High School of Computer Techniques (cofee+lunch) with great punctulity. At the Polish-Japanese School there were: - 2 lecture rooms (for 100 and 40 persons) each with darkenning, OVH, telebeam and PC with PowerPoint - 2 lab rooms for track #1 each for 24 persons, 6 PC's with MS-windows, 6 PC's with Linux, 1 Unix Work Station (HP or Sun), connected via 3 hubs to router - 2 lab rooms for track #2 each for 18 persons, 9 PC's with both MS-Windows and Linux, 3 CISCO routers, 3 hubs, 6 dial-up modems, 1 telephone, Sun WorkStation. (for both lab rooms of track#2 we had also: PBX - switching board, terminal server and crate with 12 rack-mountable modems - lecturer room (2 PC's, 2 printers, mobile telephone) - exhibition room (4 PC's, 2 printers) - 2 storage rooms for empty boxes - dining room The Participants (Students, Lecturers and VIPs) There were eighty attendees (students) at the Workshop from twenty four countries. These included the members of the CEENet as well as other ones that aspire to become members of the organizations in the near future. Since some of the countries in the CEENet community have highly developed network structure and organization they waved their right to send students either completely or partially (Austria, Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic). This made room for the others which have just entered the world of networking to increase the number of delegate well above the initially preset quota of three per country. The structure of the participants (students, lecturers and VIP's) AL - 6 AT - 1 AZ - 1 BE - 1 BH - 1 KS - 1 KY - 1 LT - 5 LV - 4 MK - 9 MD - 5 PL - 9 RO - 6 RU - 6 SI - 6 BG - 1 BY - 5 CZ - 4 EE - 5 FR - 1 GE - 7 HU - 3 SK - 3 UA - 5 US - 2 YU - 1 In total there were 100 persons from 26 countries, namely 48 students on track #1, 32 students on track #2, 18 lecturers, and 2 VIPs. The Evaluation On the final day of the lectures, the attendees were handed out workshop evaluation forms. According to the survey the participants liked - the content of the Workshop - most of the prepared materials - the competence of the lecturers - the lab exercises and the equipment - to have two tracks in one place (choice of lectures) - joint mailing list for exchange of experience and possible cooperation - universal agreement that there should be future Workshops - the opportunity to unify and systems the previous knowledge, or be framed in a different prospective - the hotel (the rooms, the food and the opportunity to be together) - the Polish-Japanese School facilities - the cordiality and the business attitude of all the organizations involved in the Workshop setup while they would have preferred - being given the course materials in prior to the start of the Workshop - possible global division to "advanced" and "elementary" tracks - more technical presentations by the sponsors - special topics (like building a campus network, running an IP registry, or help-desk) - more case studies (the enactment of national networks in the CEENet) - introduction of the attendees - shorter lecture periods (no longer than forty-five minutes) - more social events, e.g. welcome part at the beginning. In percentages, the results are the following - 85 % of respondents described workshop as OK, good, very good or perfect. - 13 % had no opinion - 2 % had negative opinion. There were two additional independent evaluations by - Mr. Simon Holland (DG13) who interviewed at least 1 person/country and had a positive impression. He pointed out the possible financing of the next CEENet w/shop from EC funds - Mr. Jonathan Paizer and the 16 employees of the Soros Foundation gave a positive report to George Soros. They have pre-assigned funds for CEENet'96 W/shop. Their presence provided us with an ample opportunity to talk about the merits of the Workshop, and the need for further improvements in case future workshops are reality. The Albanian team for their hard work received an award, while we all appreciated the involvments of the Estonian and Slovenian teams. Aftermath the Workshop It has been agreed that after the Workshop, a mailing list should be established as forum for all the attendees of the Workshop. Also, due to additional support by Soros Foundation, the materials presented at the Workshop will be put on the WWW server of the CEENet organization. Moreover, the team of lecturers soon starts to work on the proceedings of the workshop that should be published in a form of book along with a short dictionary of networking (according to the survey it is going to be eagerly waited by the attendees). The Workshop has been both a learning experience and organizational challenge for all of us. Most of the lecturers came early and setup the laboratories from scratch, working long hours into the night. The organizers, from boarding facilities, to the transportation, lecture halls and laboratories did their best to make it work. With one or two exceptions, the materials for the lectures were given concurrently with the lectures. Clearly, the kind of effort the Workshop is, it proved to be a mosaic of commitments, devotion, enthusiasm and involvement. The goals of the Workshop were to promote the benefits of the contemporary network technology, to introduce the Internet paradigm in Central and Eastern European countries and to identify common problems in building national academic infrastructure. The comments of the attendees during and after the Workshop prove that these goals have been satisfied to a respectable degree by the largest project undertaken by the CEENet so far. A standard and a reference have been established to be maintained and improved in the future for which there is a consensus on at least one point: there must be next workshop. Prof. D-r Oliver B. Popov, Chairman-Programme Committee Dr. Jacek Gajewski Chairman-Organizing Committee Warsaw, September 27, 1995