The 2009 GARR Technical Workshop, titled "Serving Users: When Complex Technologies Meet Ease of Use", will be held in Rome from June 15 to 18, 2009, at the CNR headquarters, located at Piazzale Aldo Moro, 7, in the Auditorium.

Today, many user communities have new and growing needs for their study and research activities, particularly in terms of high-value-added services. These include authentication and authorization, mobility support, data security and protection, collaboration, information sharing, and advanced multimedia applications (such as multi-videoconferencing and VoIP, as well as webTV and radio).

This year’s event will focus on the evolving role of GARR and APMs in addressing these needs: going beyond providing high-bandwidth and highly reliable connectivity, and aiming to deliver a wide range of advanced services that are as seamless and user-friendly as possible for end-users.

The conference will mark the launch of the first national Federation for Authentication and Authorization Infrastructures. Coordinated by GARR and dedicated to the university and research community, the Federation was established following the success of the IDEM pilot project, which concluded in 2008.
Aimed at end users, service and content providers, user organization representatives, and industry experts, the conference will introduce the Federation’s objectives and operations, showcasing its benefits for members through case studies.
The program includes dedicated technical sessions, offering in-depth discussions with experts on the technology behind the Federation (Shibboleth, etc.).

The eighth GARR Technical Workshop, titled "GARR-X, the Future of the Network", was held in Milan from April 1 to 4 at the University of Milan.

The event focused primarily on presenting the GARR-X project: its planned architecture, implementation roadmap, and the new operational and application services it will offer to users.

Special attention was given to the integration model of metropolitan and regional networks with GARR-X, highlighting initiatives already in operation or in the planning phase, which could serve as benchmarks for the future. Other topics covered included network monitoring, the experimentation of a federated AAI (Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure), aspects of security, IPv6, and support for various application classes such as VoIP, multimedia services, Grid, and Data Centers.

Finally, a significant portion of the workshop was dedicated to technical updates for the GARR community, featuring a wide range of tutorials.

The primary role of the GARR Network is to support academic and research activities in Italy, fostering collaboration among connected institutions and driving knowledge and innovation forward.

Additionally, the GARR Network enables researchers across various scientific fields—such as Biological Sciences, Medicine, Earth Observation, and High-Energy Physics—to leverage a high-capacity telecommunications infrastructure. This allows them to exchange vast amounts of data in real time with the global scientific, academic, and cultural community.

The Conference aims to demonstrate how a shared network infrastructure can enhance collaboration both within the research community itself and with other multidisciplinary scientific communities operating on international research networks. On one hand, the event seeks to introduce the medical research community to ongoing projects and initiatives within National Research and Education Networks (NREN). On the other hand, it provides the GARR community with insight into the needs and advancements of Telemedicine in Italy.

The key topics covered will include emerging grid technologies, video communication, applications in teleradiology, neurology, e-oncology, and medical image processing, with a strong focus on security mechanisms for handling sensitive medical data.

The central theme of the event will be the application of advanced digital technologies and services to traditional fields of knowledge, ranging from the Arts to Medicine. The conference will explore cutting-edge technologies such as remote presence, virtual reality, and tele-immersion, along with collaborative tools for education and research at a distance, and how their use is transforming – and in many ways has already begun to transform – the way we engage with Culture.

The guiding thread is light: a light that travels through the national research and education network, enabling real—not just "virtual"—connections between different disciplines and communities.

On one side, experts in advanced technologies; on the other, specialists in the humanities in their many forms: artists, scholars, medical professionals, researchers, librarians, and cultural heritage curators.

These worlds are coming closer together, driven by a growing awareness and the introduction of increasingly intuitive and "transparent" technological tools, designed to be accessible even to users without a strictly scientific or technical background.
The annual GARR Conference brings together technical experts, users of innovative applications, and the Italian academic community to discuss key topics and emerging trends in the sector. Presentations by internationally renowned speakers will showcase leading projects in the field, as well as major global vendors of advanced network, multimedia, and innovation technologies.

This year's conference will focus on applications and experiences in the medical, musical, museum, and cultural sectors. As such, the program and committees will feature some of the most significant national initiatives in these fields.

Alongside the event, there will be a theoretical and practical seminar introducing Shibboleth, organized by the Library of the CNR Research Area in Bologna. The seminar, designed to present Shibboleth’s architecture and functionality while guiding participants through the installation process, will take place on March 5, 2007, from 3 PM to 6 PM at CASPUR.

The purpose of an AAI (Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure) is to simplify and standardize access to services across different organizations. An AAI manages authentication and authorization processes between a user, their home organization, and the resource they wish to access (e.g., a service provided by another organization).

The federated model on which it is based aligns perfectly with the guidelines of the "2007-2009 Three-Year Plan for Public Administration IT" issued by CNIPA (October 2006): "The federal state model envisions a peer-to-peer collaboration among different institutional entities."

This approach requires the gradual adoption of a federated information system, where administrative actions result from cooperation among multiple stakeholders. Following the example of existing projects in Europe and worldwide, there is a growing demand in Italy for a national Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure to facilitate access to and sharing of digital library and education services, such as document delivery, OAI repositories, e-journals, databases, and proxy servers.

The goal of this event is to foster a discussion on developing an Italian AAI that can scale up and replicate ongoing and future pilot initiatives on a national level.

The seventh GARR Workshop "netWork in progress: the network evolves with its users" will take place on November 16 and 17, 2006 at the APAT Conference Hall, Via Curtatone 7, Rome.

The Workshop will showcase the latest developments in the GARR Network, new technologies, services being rolled out, and user experiences in utilizing them.

Here are some of the topics that will be covered during the event:

• Grid - what many consider to be the killer application of the coming years, already widely used by many GARR users, analyzed from a network perspective; the typical challenges of data transfer in this environment, interaction with the network infrastructure, and particularly with the IPv6 protocol; the work of the GOC (Grid Operations Centre).
• Local and metropolitan networks - the experience of some advanced users in implementing datacenter, metropolitan, and wireless networks: technologies, applications, and future prospects.
• Schools, IRCCS, and Public Administration - the GARR community is expanding with new users: who they are and how the Research Network is evolving to accommodate them.
• Legal and web - some legal aspects of the network, particularly the web, that interest and sometimes concern many users; the NIC service and the registration of new .eu domains for the GARR community; finally, the ENUM experimentation on the GARR network and its future prospects.
• GARR-CA - the new certification infrastructure for the GARR community will soon be launched: a brief seminar to help users navigate it.

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.