I've spent the last couple of days at
Networkshop 35 in sunny Exeter - the first Networkshop I've attended since coming as a
presenter 5 years ago.
I was a student at Exeter University 16 years ago, and the most of the sessions were in the Newman lecturer theatres, causing flashbacks to my Maths and Psychology lecturers....
Main purpose for attending, other getting a general overview of latest network developments, was to help forumlate plans for the future development of our wireless network (essentially I now want to get the whole University covered), and I've picked up some very useful info on this. Its quite clear the move is towards thin access points, managed from a central management controller of some type, with a moved towards 802.1x for authentication. I think we'll need to continue supporting web based redirection for while (it's easy for our students to use), and I want to support MAC address for DS and PSP users as well, perhaps in a limited way. Two or three companies had really good solutions for this, so we'll be talking to them in the near future.
Other than that, we've had useful sessions on the future of
Shibboleth (a replacement for Athens for us, but will do a lot more as well -won't go into is here), IPTV (we've been looking at that for halls of residence), network security, recent legal changes, and a fascinating talk on the
UK Honeynet project. The later was particular reassuring - a small team of 5 people on the UK (plus more around the world) dedicating time to monitoring hacking attempts around the world by way of honeypots (PCs/servers set up specifically to get hacked in order to learn more about hacking and hackers). Well worth reading more about if you are in to network security.
A couple of really good sessions this morning, the first from Bill Ashraf from University of Bradford, who explained how he was using technology such as podcasting and video to change how he engages with his students, and the second a hugely entertaining whistle stop tour through a whole range of range of possible future technologies from BT’s Graham Whitehead..
It got me thinking – would it have been ethical of me to point my iSight camera at the stage and recording the proceedings for you? Why would that be any different to sharing my notes? In fact, it may be better, there would be no room for misinterpretation. I’m sure there are a host of ethical and copyright issues…
A few of the points that stuck in my mind from Bill..,
- Bill asked what does Podcasting mean for the future of the lecture. e.g. the stucture of gluocose doesn’t change, so why not have a repository of really top lectures on the subject?
- He also asked why do we get students to write all the time? Why don’t we get them to give audio/video assignments sometimes.
The gist of Graham Whitehead’s talk (times they are a changin’) was that there has been a staggering amount of change in the last 25 years (when the ZX81 was cutting edge, no internet, no mobiles etc) so what are the possibilities for the next few years (for example cars that know who you are as you approach and automatically adjust the seats, temperature etc). I guess the point was that we don’t know what is coming, but things are changing really quickly, and we all need to stay alert and make sure we keep up if we are to provide decent services and make the most of the new technology.
Finally, many, many congratulations to Dave Thornley from Sheffield Hallam, who picked up the UCISA Award for Excellence for his work on virtualisation. Dave really deserved this for picking up and working with the technology long before many of us thought it even vaguely viable for enterprise deployment – a truly outstanding piece of work.
(Also, if any of the organisors are reading this – thanks – excellent conference – really good range of speakers and great organisation).