RIPE 79 Meeting, Manhal Mohamed

my experience in attending RIPE79

i was very honored to be selected as one of the Abha Ahuja Bursary Award participants , and nominated to attend one of the RIR meetings , it was my first time to attend a RIPE meeting , "different network community for me" , the conference was in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, as it is an open forum for all parties interested in the technical development of the Internet. The objective of the RIPE community is to ensure the continued administrative and technical coordination necessary to maintain and develop the Internet. It is not a standards body like the Internet Engineering Team (IETF) and does not deal with domain names like ICANN.

Before traveling to Rotterdam, Netherlands, I reviewed the conference agenda from their website and selected and studied some of the topics that may be of interest to me, on my first day of arrival and because I don't know the country well . "i had to dig more :D it was a bit cold there please check every details before you travel anywhere :D " After I arrived in Amsterdam I had to travel to Rotterdam where the conference venue, the moment i reached Rotterdam i found that the hackathon is already started “ I missed it because I didn’t check the pre-activities before the event , so I barely catch it on the second day "don’t fell in that mistake , check every details and activities” so I put my suitcase aside and insisted to attend "no rest", and then i met Mr Randy “ “the very super Kind person ever you can met in this event ” enlightened me by all the existing groups, for those who do not know what hackathon is , you can refer to this link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackathon . This time, the groups were discussing various topics in the Internet of Things and were as follows:

• Group1:
  • Goal: Detecting malicious device behaviour to prevent/stop i.e. DDoS attacks
  • Approach: Identifying network anomalies by analysing network traffic patterns
• Group2:
  • Goal: Using Raspberry Pi as a LoraWAN gateway and as a RIPE Atlas probe
  • Approach: Adding RIPE probe functionality to a TTN (LoRaWAN) Gateway
• Group3:
  • Goal: Sending information to fragmented networks, where there is no access to the global Internet
  • Approach: Using raspbi as local NDN forwarder between the consumer requesting information and a drone hovering the area to disseminate information
• Group4:
  • Goal: WLAN probe tracking WLAN infrastructures
  • Approach: Measuring performance indicators using MicroPython on a ESP32

So I joined the third group since the subject attracted my interest and it was a new and interesting topic for me “was my first time to hear of NDN”, although I joined the team on the second day, and I am far from the level of the other team members and the topic was completely new to me, but the benefit that I gained from The discussions between the members of the team was very informative, so I would recommend to anyone who wants to participate or attend any conference that contains Hackathon activities to join it without hesitation and not to be shy from lack of knowledge, definitely will benefit from the discussion.

There was a session to welcome the newcomers to the conference, where they addressed the most important points related to the conference, the definition of the Organizing Committee and its sponsors, to enlighten some of the activities that may interest us.

in the RIPE meetings There is a mentor is usually assigned to any newcomer. I did not get one maybe because i filled the mentor request form late , but if you are attending RIPE make sure to fill it early enough and get touch with your mentor. The mentor will accompany you during the conference after you have identified your area of interest and direct you to activities that may be of interest to you.

Although I didn't get a mentor and usually I am an introvert person where in similar programs people introduce me and I’m not the type of an initiative person , but for those who are same as me ,and find it hard to blend with new people in the various existing activities, I do advise anyone intending to attend a RIPE conference not to hesitate to take part in any activity as it will receive a great welcome from the people around and will feel comfortable, just push yourself and do it , you will never regret , the people , organizers , anyone are SUPER HELPFUL ^_^.

There is also a = Meet & Greet team = ready to help, they are wearing a red T-shirts, if you ask them anything they will guide and help you, if you are lost , catch one of them and just ASK :)

• I attended some of the tutorials of domain names, it was very short , but fortunately any session is being video recorded and will replay for late people to attend it , so don’t panic if you miss the session , you will find it and it will be re-played again with all the session speakers available to answer your questions "great idea "
• Also, between the sessions and breaks I talked with many attendees and from different companies in various topics, including the challenges we face as a community in the field, and some of them expressed their total admiration of network operators in Sudan and some of them expressed their desire to participate in one of the activities of the group.
• I also attended the IOT working group that discussed the output of all hackathon groups beside other related topics , was very informative and great session to attend , after that I attended the “Build 8 x 100G dark 70km fiber connection” it was also very informative but the time is very short to implement all what I have learnt.

My evaluation of the conference as a whole is a wonderful conference, useful, added a very great experience in knowledge, social development, meeting new people and spreading knowledge I expected some workshops that deal with more technical topics. But it turned out to be a conference that tends to discuss policy and research more than deep technical stuff. But full off technical people who are open to help. 

• I also recommend to participate in all the social activities associated with the conference, it was a short travel period I could not attend the last social activity, where you will meet with all the participants and organizers, which allows you to expand the scope of your social network
• I totally Recommend it to researchers, doctoral students, service providers, policy-making institutions, seekers of opportunities to connect with large companies

at the end after this great experience i feel im ready and confident enough to participate more with something next time i attend events like this.