Ger­ard Best

The pic­turesque East­ern Caribbean is­land of Saint Lu­cia will be the back­drop to the high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed gath­er­ing of the men and women re­spon­si­ble for se­cur­ing and ad­min­is­ter­ing com­put­er net­works across the Caribbean.

From April 27 to May 1, the Caribbean Net­work Op­er­a­tors Group (CaribNOG) will hold their ninth re­gion­al meet­ing, a sig­nif­i­cant fo­rum that has been a key role in co­or­di­nat­ing and equip­ping the re­gion's tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ty.

"CaribNOG plays a unique role in the re­gion's tech­nol­o­gy ecosys­tem. It is a vol­un­teer-based com­mu­ni­ty ded­i­cat­ed to strength­en­ing the Caribbean in­dige­nous ca­pac­i­ty to ad­dress the rapid­ly evolv­ing tech­nol­o­gy land­scape," ex­plained Bevil Wood­ing, one of the CaribNOG founders and a main or­gan­is­er of the event.

"Com­put­er net­work en­gi­neers and tech­nol­o­gy spe­cial­ists from across the re­gion and around the world take the time to share their knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence with the col­leagues at CaribNOG," he added.

Found­ed in 2010, CaribNOG has been steadi­ly build­ing its rep­u­ta­tion as the Caribbean's most in­flu­en­tial and so­lu­tions-ori­ent­ed fo­rum for net­work en­gi­neers and com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy pro­fes­sion­als. The group has al­so built strong con­nec­tions with oth­er Net­work Op­er­a­tor Groups from around the world, in­clud­ing Latin Amer­i­ca, North Amer­i­ca and as far as the Pa­cif­ic.

"CaribNOG mem­bers ben­e­fit im­mense­ly from ex­po­sure to ex­perts from around the re­gion and across the globe," says Ja­maican-born Stephen Lee, an­oth­er CaribNOG found­ing mem­ber and CEO of ArkiTechsInc., a US-based tech­nol­o­gy firm.

"Top­ics range from pro­tect­ing lo­cal net­works from hack­ers and cy­ber-crim­i­nals to de­ploy­ing broad­band and the fu­ture of the In­ter­net," he added.

Net­work se­cu­ri­ty, In­ter­net ex­change points, cloud com­put­ing and glob­al net­work trends are among the top­ics to be ad­dressed at CaribNOG's 9th re­gion­al meet­ing.

"Saint Lu­cia is re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to host­ing this im­por­tant meet­ing," said Si­mon Alexan­der, lo­cal or­gan­is­er and IT Man­ag­er at the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for East­ern Caribbean States (OECS) Com­mis­sion.

"The pre­vi­ous CaribNOG gath­er­ing in Cu­ra­cao drew over 100 per­sons from more than 15 coun­tries. The in­ter­na­tion­al na­ture of gath­er­ing af­fords us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case Saint Lu­cia and the OECS to the world as a sig­nif­i­cant tech­nol­o­gy-en­abled des­ti­na­tion."

The CaribNOG 9 meet­ing is be­ing co-host­ed by the In­ter­net Cor­po­ra­tion of As­signed Names and Num­bers (ICANN), and is al­so sup­port­ed by the re­gion­al and glob­al In­ter­net com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing the Am­s­ter­dam In­ter­net Ex­change (Ams-IX), the Amer­i­can Reg­istry for In­ter­net Num­bers (ARIN), the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union, Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Google, the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean In­ter­net Ad­dress­es Reg­istry (LAC­NIC), the In­ter­net So­ci­ety, the Brazil­ian Net­work In­for­ma­tion Cen­ter (NIC.br), ArkiTechs Inc, Aka­mai Inc., Mi­crosoft and Pack­et Clear­ing House.

CaribNOG 9 will fea­ture a slate of ex­perts, in­clud­ing Ar­turo Servin (Google Inc.); Car­los Mart�nez and Ale­jan­dro Acos­ta (LAC­NIC); Bevil Wood­ing (PCH); Mark Kosters (ARIN); Claire Craig (UWI); Al­bert Daniels (ICANN); Sh­er­non Os­epa (ISOC); Steve Spence and Stephen Lee (Arkitechs).

This ninth event comes on the heels of 2014 meet­ings in­Do­mini­caand Cu­ra­cao.

More in­for­ma­tion is avail­able on the­of­fi­cial event web­site.