BE­LIZE CITY–Over 100 com­put­er net­work­ing spe­cial­ists and en­thu­si­asts gath­ered in Be­lize City, Be­lize for the sixth re­gion­al meet­ing of the Caribbean Net­work Op­er­a­tors Group (CaribNOG).

The week­long event drew lo­cal and re­gion­al par­tic­i­pants to Cen­tral Amer­i­ca's on­ly Eng­lish-speak­ing ter­ri­to­ry for a se­ries of pre­sen­ta­tions and hands-on tech­ni­cal work­shops de­liv­ered by Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al com­put­er ex­perts.

CaribNOG co-or­di­na­tor Bevil Wood­ing de­scribed the vol­un­teer-based group as im­por­tant to on­go­ing ef­forts to strength­en and pro­tect Caribbean com­put­er net­works from a host of new threats.

"The head­lines have been filled with sto­ries of com­put­er hack­ing, unau­tho­rised sur­veil­lance and dam­age or loss caused by failed com­put­er sys­tems."

Wood­ing ex­plained that "CaribNOG pro­vides unique re­gion­al fo­rum for lo­cal net­work tech­ni­cians and tech­nol­o­gy pro­fes­sion­als to share ex­pe­ri­ences and build prac­ti­cal skills need­ed to take the re­gion in­to the fu­ture."

Eti­enne Sharp, a Di­rec­tor at Al­ter­na­tive Net­works Lim­it­ed, a Be­lize-based In­ter­net ser­vice provider, was full of praise for the event and par­tic­u­lar­ly for its rel­e­vance to Be­lize.

"This is my first time at a CaribNOG event and I am quite im­pressed by the ap­proach to shar­ing knowl­edge and high­light­ing im­por­tant tech­ni­cal is­sues such as net­work se­cu­ri­ty, In­ter­net ex­change points and IP net­work de­sign."

Sharp said that the typ­i­cal cul­ture in the in­dus­try has been for pro­fes­sion­als to work in iso­la­tion, and the po­ten­tial for col­lab­o­ra­tion has been a re­al eye-open­er.

"The ses­sions spoke to the core is­sues we face on a dai­ly ba­sis as net­work ad­min­is­tra­tors and tech­nol­o­gy spe­cial­ists. In ad­di­tion to the high lev­els of col­lab­o­ra­tion, I was al­so glad to see that most of the ex­perts are drawn from right here in the Caribbean."

IXP com­ing to Be­lize

One of the ma­jor out­comes of the event was a pub­lic an­nounce­ment by Be­lize ISPs of their in­ten­tion to form a lo­cal In­ter­net ex­change point.

Kings­ley Smith, Di­rec­tor of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions at the Be­lize Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion shared that the event gave the lo­cal ISPs an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ham­mer out the is­sues and draft an im­ple­men­ta­tion plan for fa­cil­i­ty to ex­change In­ter­net traf­fic be­tween com­pet­ing ser­vice providers.

"This de­vel­op­ment is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits to lo­cal ISPs and the In­ter­net users in Be­lize," ac­cord­ing to Smith.

The Be­lize Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion was the lo­cal host for the event and has com­mit­ted to as­sist­ing the lo­cal tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ty by fa­cil­i­tat­ing fol­low up tech­ni­cal train­ing.

CaribNOG 6 was al­so sup­port­ed by a num­ber of re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al In­ter­net de­vel­op­ment or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union, the Amer­i­can Reg­istry of In­ter­net Num­bers (ARIN), the In­ter­net So­ci­ety (ISOC) and the Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean In­ter­net Ad­dress­es Reg­istry (LAC­NIC) and US-based Pack­et Clear­ing House (PCH). The next CaribNOG re­gion­al event is sched­uled for Do­mini­ca in April 2014.