May 26 (First Day)

I followed the IPv6 Pratictal Tutorial, where it was possible to understand all myths and realities about the transition of IPv4 to IPv6.

It is a fact that the IPv4 pool is running out (the end is expected to 2010 or 2011) due to the multiple equipments connected to Internet nowadays (computer, PDA, mobiles, cars, etc), so we need to get an alternative fast. The IPv6 is the alternative choosen by technical community (IETF).

One of the advantages concerning the IPv6 is the auto-configuration tool (today, the IPv4 needs a manual and long-term maintenance).

One of the disadvantages related to the transition of IPv4 to IPv6 is that not all equipments are ready. It means that not all computer and websites work with IPv6 and not all routers accept both versions. So it shall be a real obstacle to developing countries that have older equipments and tools.

It is recommended to keep “dual stack” routers (that work with both IP versions), but it can’t be a long-term solution because sooner or later all connections will be through IPv6 only.

The material concerning this tutorial is available at this link.

Unfortunately not all of them are in English, so please let me know if you need translations.

May 27

7 th NAPLA meeting

This meeting is related to Network Access Points (NAP) and Internet Exchange Points (IXP). There were some specific issues and regional experiences (such as Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador and Chile) concerning the route servers, IXP and NAPs. It also have an interesting discussion about the IPv6 peering experience.

There were an interesting discussion about the lack of investments in Latin America (specially after the IPv6 peering North-american company that brought some experiences in Europe and Asia). The main argument is that there is no market that brings return to their investment or even some profit perspective. For example, if they set a route in Brazil, the largest market, first they have a 100% tax and they won’t be able to extend to other countries because there is no integration rule among us.

The presentations are available at this link but also if someone needs tranlations let me know.

LACNOG (Latin American and Caribbean Network Operations Group)

There were some regional experiences concerning the transition of IPv4 to IPv6 (which are the main obstacles and how the IPv4 router are settled now).

Also an introduction to a Certification Project and a Time Protocol developed in Brazil which intents to syncronize all dates and time from routers and computers (besides the presentation below, there are some information at: http://ntp.br/).

And finally some statistics data concerning the development of Internet in Brazil. This research has been done for 3 years now and it gives some idea og the growing market in mobiles (the surveys for the past 3 years are available for download in English at this link). There were an interesting question about similar surveys in LA&C countries which could not be answered.

The presentations are available at this link (again, just tell me who needs a translation).

May 28

Network Security Event

During the morning, the main point were the security issues with some examples from different actors.

The pannelist Maria Paula Espnoza spoke about the network security system implemented in the University and the high points were: (i) they used an Open Source Security Information Management (OSSIM), which information are available at www.ossim.net, but there are some private options such as Cisco Mars and Cisco Works; (ii) there are 4 main components in a network: the mainframe, 1 or 2 segments that monitor the network and a Database, so there are different kinds of risks (atacks received) and compromisse (atacks sent by their machines) to each machine. (iii) before the implementation of OSSIM, 99,92% of the atacks were false positive, after it, the number were around 78% of real atacks alarm!

The other pannelists, brotught some interesting information and numbers. For example,  after monitoring 10 machines open proxy in Brazil, there were blocked 500 thousand spam messages that should reach 4 billions people. Around 70% of the messages blocked came from Taiwan and should return to a machine there (so they used the Brazilian network for hidding their origin). Besides, 97% of the atacks were the in gatway 25-TCP, so its highly recommend to change to gateway 587-TCP as a default for e-mails (for further information please see RFC 4954 and the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group – www.maawg.org).

Moreover, some surveys show funny data, like the atacks fall dowm durin Christmas and New Year Holidays (so even atackers got a Holiday!). There are many kinds of atacks and economic usage of security breaks, like malwares, botnets and DDoS (Denial of Service – which is having more requests than the server can work with).

All presentations and more data are avialable at this link (again, let me know who needs translation).

LACNIC Open Police Forum

During the afternoon and the next days, it took place the LACNIC Open Police Forum, an opportunity to present what has been done in the past year, some similar experiences (from LA&C and “outside” countries and organisations like Afrinic, Icann, IETF, among others), and what should be done this year. Concerning the future proposals, all of them involved the transition from IPv4 to IPv6.

It is important to note that LACNIC activities are related to this Forum, since it legitimates the policies and functions it will assume for the year. Which means that in order to develop any police or activity, it has do be accepted during this LACNIC Forum. There were some discussions in order to have some tools for those issues that can`t wait 1 year to be voted. But it will be further discussed in next year meeting.

The related presentations are available at this link.

May 29

There were again more discussions about the IPv6, myths and realities, ho to implement in Latin America and Caribbean, the obstacles, the predictions, and so on.

The material is available at this link.

The second part of the day were the LACNIC Open Police Forum (please see above).

May 30

During the morning we had the chance to experiment the IPv6 connection, where it was possible to check if your computer is prepared to IPv6, if the usual websites you visit are ready for IPv6 (I could only access Google, for example, all others sites I am used to aren`t available) and there were more presentations about it (all availabe at this link).

The afternoon took place an ISOC meeting (INET 200  about general overview and regional experiences, besides antecipating the IGF theme: how to get the next billion Internet users. Material at this link.