Hi everyone,
Just forwarding this from the Network Operators' Group, Bhutan.
As you probably already know, the NoGs and FOSS communities have some overlap especially, wrt network code, infrastructure, etc.
Hope this is useful - I was at BTNoG last year, and it definitely looked interesting - esp because in my experience, the Bhutan ISP/infra needs more talent and help. So feel free to volunteer!
https://nog.bt for more.
Best,
Hi Cherry, Appreciate the forward and encouraging participation :-)
I would like to echo the symbiosis between the NOG and FOSS communities not just in Bhutan, but across the wider industry.
Bhutan Telecom (DrukNET to be precise) lead by Ganga sir/Jichen sir/Norbu sir et al, was where the seeds of FOSS in Bhutan were sown in the late 90s. BSD used to be the defacto OS then at DrukNET (with gradual shift to Red Hat and Debian based systems), along with most netops and network services tools.
DrukNET/BT, Tashi Infocomm, DrukREN, and NSRC were the early founders and supporters of btNOG, which ensured its sustainability over the past 11 years (with help from other funding agencies and the efforts from group of volunteers).
The workshops offered at btNOG (DNS, NetSec/InfoSec, Systems Admin, Network Management, etc) have always been based on FOSS tools (excepting Router/Switch OSes).
Cheers, — Tashi
On 7 Jan 2025, at 12:35 pm, Mathew Cherry G. cherry@backyardinnovations.co.uk wrote:
Hi everyone,
Just forwarding this from the Network Operators' Group, Bhutan.
As you probably already know, the NoGs and FOSS communities have some overlap especially, wrt network code, infrastructure, etc.
Hope this is useful - I was at BTNoG last year, and it definitely looked interesting - esp because in my experience, the Bhutan ISP/infra needs more talent and help. So feel free to volunteer!
https://nog.bt for more.
Best,
-- Math/(~cherry)
-------------------- Start of forwarded message -------------------- From: Tashi Phuntsho toebinoz@gmail.com Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2025 14:38:25 +1000 To: btnog@nog.bt CC: BTNOG Coordination btnog-coord@nog.bt Subject: [btNOG] Re: Call for btNOG12 Volunteers!
Hi All, My apologies for missing out the year in my previous email.
Please see the following update:
btNOG12: 2025 Workshops: 17-21 August Conference: 22 August
btNOG13: 2026 Workshops: 16-20 August Conference: 21 August
btNOG14: 2027 Workshops: 15-19 August Conference: 20 August
Thanks once again, — Tashi (on behalf of btNOG Coordination Team)
On 6 Jan 2025, at 2:36 pm, Tashi Phuntsho toebinoz@gmail.com wrote:
Happy 2025 Everyone!
Future btNOG dates have been finalised as follows (venue/location will be decided closer to the event):
btNOG12: Workshops: 17-21 August Conference: 22 August
btNOG13: Workshops: 16-20 August Conference: 21 August
btNOG14: Workshops: 15-19 August Conference: 20 August
To allow for better planning and coordination, we will be running btNOG workshops (5-days) and conference (1-day) on the 3rd week of August every year going forward,
As you all know from your previous attendance at btNOG conferences/workshops, the annual btNOG event is coordinated and arranged by a group volunteers from the community.
To ensure long term sustainability, we are always hopeful that we will have new volunteers every year, with a couple of previous coordination team members staying back to guide and mentor.
The btNOG team is now seeking volunteers from the Bhutanese ICT community to be a part of the btNOG Coordination Team.
Please submit your expression of interest to btnog-coord@nog.bt mailto:btnog-coord@nog.bt (please include your contact details, where you work and 1-2 sentences on why you would like to volunteer for the coordination team).
Do feel free to forward this to your friends/colleagues who have attended previous btNOG conferences/workshops.
Thanks, — Tashi (on behalf of btNOG Coordination Team)
Go to the btnog mailing list on Orbit -- https://orbit.apnic.net/mailing-list/btnog@nog.bt Explore https://orbit.apnic.net, where the APNIC community connect, discuss and share information related to Internet addressing and networking. To unsubscribe send an email to btnog-leave@nog.bt -------------------- End of forwarded message --------------------
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On Tue, 7 Jan 2025 18:02:54 +1000, Tashi Phuntsho toebinoz@gmail.com said:
Hi Cherry, Appreciate the forward and encouraging participation :-)
I would like to echo the symbiosis between the NOG and FOSS communities not just in Bhutan, but across the wider industry.
Bhutan Telecom (DrukNET to be precise) lead by Ganga sir/Jichen sir/Norbu sir et al, was where the seeds of FOSS in Bhutan were sown in the late 90s. BSD used to be the defacto OS then at DrukNET (with gradual shift to Red Hat and Debian based systems), along with most netops and network services tools.
Hello Tashi,
Thanks so much for that informative history - as a NetBSD developer (and a former FreeBSD one) i'm very pleased to see that BSD was used! (I assume FreeBSD ?).
DrukNET/BT, Tashi Infocomm, DrukREN, and NSRC were the early founders and supporters of btNOG, which ensured its sustainability over the past 11 years (with help from other funding agencies and the efforts from group of volunteers).
The workshops offered at btNOG (DNS, NetSec/InfoSec, Systems Admin, Network Management, etc) have always been based on FOSS tools
What I find interesting is that the folks that worked on FOSS that I have come across (both in Bhutan and other places) have done very well in their careers. This is not an accident, in my experience.
(excepting Router/Switch OSes).
it's hard to compete the cisco (and now huawei) ecosystem - but for eg: IIJ routers which runs Japan's ISP backbone still uses FOSS (Used to be NetBSD, but Maz, who I met at btnog24 last year, told me they are/have transitioned to linux now).
I'd be curious to see what tradeoffs are possible with modern ISP requirements - I believe there are optimisations such as Edge router virtualisation etc. that have now come in, due to the IPv6 + IoT usecase explosion.
Interesting times!
Hi Cherry,
On 9 Jan 2025, at 5:28 pm, Mathew, Cherry G. cherry@backyardinnovations.co.uk wrote:
Hello Tashi,
Thanks so much for that informative history - as a NetBSD developer (and a former FreeBSD one) i'm very pleased to see that BSD was used! (I assume FreeBSD ?).
Yes indeed :-)
Am sure Dr.Philip/Jichen/Ganga would have those early Internet setup photos, but this talk at APRICOT 215 is a good one https://conference.apnic.net/data/39/history-of-internet-on-bhutan-apricot-2...
For additional historical walk back in time, have a look at this pre-SANOG6 workshop DrukNET hosted in April 2005 in collaboration with NSRC (both Philip Paeps and myself now volunteer as trainers for them to workshops and engineering assistance work across APAC):
Workshop outline - https://nsrc.org/wrc/workshops/2005/pre-SANOG-VI/outline-detailed.html
Photos - https://nsrc.org/wrc/workshops/2005/pre-SANOG-VI/photos/index.html
This was before Bhutan hosted the 6th edition of SANOG (south asian network operators group) workshops/conference few months later in July 2005.
What I find interesting is that the folks that worked on FOSS that I have come across (both in Bhutan and other places) have done very well in their careers. This is not an accident, in my experience.
Oh absolutely sir!
Many of the early folks from DrukNET (including those who attended the pre-SANOG6 workshop) and those folks who were lucky to SANOG6 workshops, have led very successful careers and some are still very active in the Bhutanese ICT industry.
(excepting Router/Switch OSes).
it's hard to compete the cisco (and now huawei) ecosystem - but for eg: IIJ routers which runs Japan's ISP backbone still uses FOSS (Used to be NetBSD, but Maz, who I met at btnog24 last year, told me they are/have transitioned to linux now).
JunOS is still based on FreeBSD from what I know, but Cisco’s IOS-XE is/was linux based, and I assume IOS-XR is based on QNX. Interestingly, Nokia has SR Linux which is based on their SR-OS.
I'd be curious to see what tradeoffs are possible with modern ISP requirements - I believe there are optimisations such as Edge router virtualisation etc. that have now come in, due to the IPv6 + IoT usecase explosion.
Well, control plane (routing protocols) was never an issue and has lots of open source options - BIRD, FRR, Quagga, VyOS.. and maybe even OpenWRT.
The challenge has always been the locked and tightly coupled forwarding plane ~ outside of the vendors, we need to figure out reasonable packet forwarding rates for practical use in real world.
If its if any interest to this community, there are champions like Andree Tonk (https://toonk.io/) who have been pushing the userland networking boundaries to allow better forwarding rates, through kernel bypass mechanisms, like DPDK.
Cheers and looking forward to some volunteers from the Bhutan FOSS community to work with btNOG.
Cheers, — Tashi
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Mathew Cherry G. -
Mathew, Cherry G.
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Tashi Phuntsho