Designing and Deploying a Dynamic Circuit Network:
A Hands-On Workshop for the R&E Networking Environment
Target Audience and Prerequisites

This workshop is oriented toward network operators, researchers, and developers who are interested in designing, deploying, and running a dynamic network in either a campus, regional, and national network environment. In this workshop, attendees design, deploy, and use a multi-domain GMPLS and Web Service based control plane network consisting of four domains, each with a number of network elements, end systems, and servers. The material is not difficult, but it does include some routing and provisioning technologies that are not widely deployed by the network engineering community and are still undergoing evolution even as we begin deploying them. Several prerequisite skills are recommended to allow us to effectively work through as much material as possible in the 2-day workshop:

• Attendees should be familiar with the Linux operating system, basic system   administration functions such as starting and stopping daemons, network configuration, shell commands, text editors such as vi and/or emacs, telnet and ssh. Familiarity with common command line interfaces for Ethernet switch configuration is helpful, but not strictly necessary to complete workshop exercises.
  
  
• Attendees will be logging into Linux systems and Ethernet switches and so will require a laptop with a wired Ethernet interface and both telnet and ssh clients installed. NOTE: The workshop does not provide terminals for attendee use.


• Attendees should be well versed in IP networking - addressing schemes and issues, routing protocols, TCP/UDP ports, inter and intra-domain routing issues, and common techniques.
  
  
• Working knowledge of Traffic Engineering concepts and protocols would be highly advantageous - especially GMPLS-RSVP-TE and GMPLS-OSPF-TE protocols and standards. Although this workshop provides a brief overview of RSVP and OSPF as evolved for GMPLS operation, the attendee should already understand traditional connection oriented signaling and routing concepts.
  
  
• Familiarity with advanced applications requirements such as distributed computing, cluster and grid computing, light path engineering, fiber and DWDM systems and networks, SONET/SDH technologies, and MPLS would be useful.
  
  
• The workshop will be using Ethernet layer switching to demonstrate the GMPLS capabilities, so a solid background in Ethernet technologies and standards is highly recommended.

This workshop provides an introduction to exciting new network capabilities with the expressed purpose of promoting the deployment and adoption with via real hands-on experience. The workshop is highly interactive and student driven, with knowledgeable presenters working closely with the attendees to work through three increasingly sophisticated network configurations. The workshop is organized in groups of 3-4 teams, with each team generally responsible for one of the domains in the workshop topology. These teams will be formed after the attendee list is finalized. In general an attempt will be made to group people such that each team has a good mix of overall network configuration experience to maximize the benefit of workshop activities.