The GARR_06 Conference aims to highlight the leading role of network infrastructures, particularly GARR and the Research and Education Networks, in bridging the digital divide both nationally and internationally.

High-level speakers will discuss GARR’s role in the broader context of the Digital Divide at the national level, as a creator of infrastructures in Southern Italy, and internationally, through its contributions to development projects in China, the Mediterranean, and South America.

The conference will showcase “value-added” services currently in use, including advanced scientific applications, while exploring new models of network usage with resources that are accessible anywhere, anytime, and for a variety of purposes. Emphasis will also be placed on the role of academic networks as drivers of innovation and development beyond the strictly scientific field, as well as the benefits brought by the network in education, such as in the “Schools on GARR” project.

Finally, the conference will offer an “overview” of GARR’s current status, both politically and technically, more than three years after the establishment of the GARR Consortium.

The sixth GARR Technical Workshop, "FROM THE NETWORK TO THE USER: WHEN THE USER BECOMES AN ACTIVE NODE OF THE NETWORK," will take place in the Aula Magna of the Rectorate Building at Sapienza University of Rome from Wednesday, November 16 to Friday, November 18, 2005.

The central theme of the sixth GARR Workshop (WS6) is the provision of end-to-end services. High-performance applications used by the academic and research communities, both nationally and internationally, as well as increasingly widespread applications such as videoconferencing, e-learning, and teleworking, require guaranteed end-to-end service quality. This can only be achieved through a flexible, versatile, and adequately capable transport infrastructure, coupled with a local network infrastructure that extends these features to the end user.

The main topics of this workshop will focus on access and local network technologies capable of supporting the most advanced network services and ensuring application performance.

During the workshop, the current status of the GARR network and its interconnections with other research networks at the European and global levels will be presented. The evolution of the network will also be discussed, highlighting its hybrid architecture, which combines circuit and packet switching. This architecture enables the configuration of virtual private networks (VPNs) and dedicated paths (including lambda-based paths), facilitating the delivery of end-to-end services.

The GARR_05 Conference is open to all network users and invites them to explore the evolution of the network and the new opportunities it will bring to research, culture, and education, through presentations of national and international projects and achievements.

Beyond just technology, the focus will be on advanced applications and new network usage models for the information society—where communication and information resources will be accessible anytime, anywhere, to anyone, and for a wide range of purposes.

Discussions will cover topics such as resource management through grid computing, remote control, and smart home automation, as well as new ways of accessing and processing information. The conference will also address strategies to extend these innovations to sectors that have only marginally benefited from the network so far, particularly education.

Alongside the conference, an IPv6 event will be held in collaboration with 6Net.

The meeting agenda spanned three days, from November 24 to 26.
The first day featured a variety of sessions.
In the morning, attendees could participate in three parallel tutorial sessions:

• A session focused on AAA (Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting)
• A session on the practical implementation of IPv6
• A session dedicated to optical networking technology

In the afternoon, two types of meetings were scheduled:
In one room, APMs had the opportunity to meet with NOC engineers first and then with CERT specialists, gaining insight into the critical work behind these essential services and engaging directly with experts through a Q&A session.
Meanwhile, in two other rooms, discussions were held to establish new working groups.

These groups aimed to develop an information network on topics of shared interest among GARR network APMs. The initial focus areas selected for these pilot working groups were Security, IPv6, MAN-LAN, and Middleware.

The following two days, November 25 and 26, were structured into four thematic sessions, lasting either 3 or 1.5 hours:

1. GARR-G: From the Backbone to the End User (3 hours)
2. Traditional and Emerging Network Services (3 hours)
3. Will We Ever Have a Secure Network? New Resources and New Threats (1.5 hours)
4. The Future of Networking: European Projects and Emerging Technologies (1.5 hours)

On the afternoon of Wednesday, November 26, after summarizing the key discussions from the previous days, a roundtable session was held on the future of the GARR network.

The 4th edition of the "GARR-B Meetings" took place in Bologna from June 24 to 26, 2002.

The main focus was on applications and advanced services over a high-bandwidth (gigabit) network. The event was also broadcast live, and recordings are available via video on demand.

Significant attention was given to presentations on ongoing and planned activities within the GARR community.
Part of the meeting was dedicated to the features of the next-generation GARR network.

The main purpose of the meeting was to define the network requirements based on the needs of its users in the fields of education and scientific research.

Dear Colleagues,
As part of the regular GARR-B Meetings, we are organizing the third edition of this event, open to both technical coordinators from institutions connected to the GARR-B network (APMs) and professionals responsible for security within their institutions.

Unlike the previous edition, this time we have included not only security-related tutorials but also presentations on the current status and future developments of the GARR-B project.

A registration fee will be required, and its amount will be communicated as soon as it is determined.

The increased use of network resources inevitably leads to a rise in issues related to unauthorized use (for example, the proliferation of unsolicited advertising emails, so-called spam, and intrusions, sometimes with severe consequences, into less protected systems).
For this reason, within GARR-B, as in other similar networks, GARR-CERT has been established as a service to manage security-related software issues.

One of the main goals of GARR-CERT, if not the primary one, is to raise user awareness about these types of issues. As part of the regular GARR-B meetings, a technical event is organized, with invitations extended to both technical managers from institutions connected to the GARR-B network (APM) and security personnel from individual institutions. The first day of the event is reserved exclusively for institutions with access to the GARR-B network.

No specific prior experience in the field of security is required, as the topics covered during the first day will be at an introductory level.