Greetings and salutations to all followers of E-Arena.gr!
Today I will write a few things about an event I have attended this week, the information I have learned, the people I have met and the companies that made this event possible. Eh ok some are a combination in terms of some people who owned the companies provided A LOT of things I have learned!
Before I do so, I will take you back into February of 2016, you see the era of 2015 and 2016 due to the economic crisis in Hellas, limited jobs and the fact that Hellenin population is vastly technological uneducated and often conflicting terms (i.e. IT doesn’t mean secretary for word/excel), I had to work in a hotel in Rodos island as lifeguard. Long story short, there I made a good friend from Italy, his name is Umberto (sorry, won’t write his lastname without permission). In the time between the 2 seasons for the hotels of 2015 and 2016, I made a trip to Milano to meet my friend.
In the flight from Athens to Milano I had the privilege to sit next to the legend Daniele Bovio and we had a little chat midflight about networks. He introduced me to Atlas which is a project that RIPE send me a probe to install on my network. From that probe they take measurements for various stuff. Since the moment I got that probe into my hands, it has always been next to my internet router and every time I moved to a new location, it was one of the first things to pack, move and deploy.
Years passes by, life goes on etc and one lovely day on April 10th 2024 I get one e-mail from RIPE that they’re going to be in event here, In Athens, Greece! I was over the moon for that opportunity!
I took that registration link from the email and shared it with my employers and my friends who are related with the field (doesn’t make sense to invite my barista friends into a network event right?).
Later on I got a 2nd e-mail that I didn’t pay attention to due to it started about the event that I got invitation from the 1st e-mail…and I missed the part that it spoke about a gift from RIPE to the Atlas probe owners!
I do mistakes too okay? haha
The lady who was responsible for the email is Jelena Cosic, she also spoke on the last day.
Jelena seemed too young and sweet and frankly? Too pretty!
So…Monday, April 22…a day after my 40th birthday…I arrive to Divani Caravel hotel in Athens, that’s about 30 to 45 minutes drive from the area I live (Glyfada) to that hotel, depends on the heavy or very heavy traffic. I was greeted by lovely people from RIPE, I got my tag card to be able to join the event AND right next to the door to event room there’s a HUGE banner from Lancom for a draw for a MacBook Air M3 (Hint: I am writing this article from that very laptop! Wink wink, I WON!!!) Next to the banner stands 2 lovely people from Lancom, first I met Nikos Zachariades, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Lancom and the even lovelier Eugenia Lemoni (Sorry, I couldn’t find linkedin profile to link, you have to take my word for it though that she is lovely young lady).
I scanned with my phone the QR code to register, greeted the people from Lancom who were SUPER FRIENDLY and open-welcoming.
They even gave me (and I assume to all the guests) a nice welcome gift -soon I will cheer from that cup guys to your health!- and I went into the event room being sure that I have submitted my entry.
A fraction of a second later, Nikos came to me and asked me why I didn’t submit my entry?
I was surprised because I had pressed the submit button with the correct information, so I took my phone out again and saw that my phone never send the info due to bad signal -I suppose- and also my fault that I didn’t confirm, I just pressed the button and stored my phone to my pocket.
So I did for 2nd time the entry to contest, made sure it worked, also the bossman (Nikos) gave me the thumbs up that it worked and then I just waited for the event to start.
Before I move on to the event itself, it made a really good impression that Nikos, with so many things on his back (Organize, run the event AND Lancom and so much more that my tiny brain can’t even imagine or form a hypothesis), he invested time on me, a literal nobody in that event that had giants of the field, to make sure I was in the contest! This is pure dedication!
If the bossman is on top of each situation as he was in this singular event, I mean Lancom must have the best COO ever or something!
Now let’s talk about the event, this was the first time ever for me to attend such an event. I didn’t knew what to expect and I was super nervous! All the people I have met to that point (and during the whole event) were and top of their fields, CEOs, COOs, Chief ITs, Network masters, ISP owners and so on!
I am a homelab user, granted somewhat advanced lab for my limited budget, representing e-arena.gr and the company I work for (dyg.gr). I belong in that field, most -if not all- of the terms and technologies were familiar to me, maybe in some cases I wasn’t in the same page as the speakers but I was at least in the same book and in same chapter so I could understand and formulate hypothesis on the topics. Sure, I used the internet to search up a few terms that I wasn’t familiar with but I was always correct on the hypothesis I was making about the topic.
The event had an agenda which you can read here and the day opened by Ignas Bagdonas and it was about bgp in routers. I am familiar with bgp but kinda doesn’t apply to the companies I work for. It makes sense for IX (Internet Exchange) but not so much on home/office routers or even the routers I am making for small datacenters. Yet, it was very interesting and informative!
After the coffee break the panel hosted 4 legends of networking in Europe, people who have shaped the form for the internet in Europe, East Asia, Middle East and Africa!
The names of the hosts were: Dennis Jennings, Daniele Bovio, Daniel Karrenberg, Niall O’Reilly (EARN), Vesna Manojlovic (moderator).
Oh wait! Did I just write Daniele Bovio just now? The name rings a bell, the face rings a whole Cathedral! Yeah yeah this is the super nice and lovely guy I met back in 2016 in the flight from Athens to Milano! Will he remember me? Kinda doubt, again I am a nobody and the guy is one of the European legends of networking!
Nevertheless, prior to this part of the event, in the coffee break, I made a new friend, his name is Antonis Damigos from otesat-maritel, another super nice guy in the field! He gave me some nice tips about LIR (Local Internet Registry) and in general, he is a nice person and knows a lot about networks. So during the 4 legends speak, I said to Antonis that “Oh I know Daniele! I will go to speak to him after the speech”. He suggested to me that I should indeed go there :)
So at the end of the speeches and the questions from the audience etc, I went to Daniele and greeted him, of course he wouldn’t recognize me out of the blue, but once I told him about the flight from Athens to Milano, he remembered the year and the event! I thanked him for that suggestion because it was the reason me, a nobody, being in that event 8 years later!
Some of the topics that interested me was about IPv6 and the need to push towards that sooner than later because it is well know for many years now, IPv4 have reached its limit and most of ISPs, at least here in Hellas, ISPs provide both IPv4 and IPv6 internet but the IPv4 comes in the form of CGNAT (Carrier Grade NAT), this itself isn’t a problem for the majority of people who are using their devices just to browse the web but this is a HUGE issue for the people like me, who run servers at home or for people who want to access their cameras remotely. If the vendor of the device doesn’t support IPv6 and you are stuck with IPv4 and your ISP has you behind CGNAT, you can’t access any of that!
On the same topic, we had input from one of the Hellenic ISPs, OTE or Cosmote. The person who spoke, Georgios Manousakis, spoke well and he was on topic with what customers want from every category. The other hosts, were only thinking in terms of end users and not so much in business terms that datacenters don’t want to upgrade to IPv6 when they already have a functional IPv4 network. In the same category I classify myself. I have invested time and money to my datacenter and sure, I can deploy a DNS and use host names but why bother altering what I already have and works as intended?
I am not a guy who doesn’t want IPv6, actually I run both at home, but for me it is easier to remember the IPv4 structure of my network than the longer IPv6. IF my ISP were kind to give me static IPv6 addresses…listen I would change my name! But you see, OTE (or Cosmote), charges me 51 euros a month for 1gbps FTTH with 100mbps only upload and if I want to get a static ip I have to change to the business plan for 76 euros a month to get static IP (1) and a total unwanted answering machine (who the F uses landline phones in 2024?…oh wait…This is Hellas…never mind…people here hang the landline phone to their ears as if it is earring). Actually I have written an article in Hellenic language here, it is meant to be informative and satirical at the same and I am answering to what I (and most likely everybody else who is honest) would like to talk back to the customers when we hear a lot of bs on the line. I used to work for 1,5 years in Vodafone Tech Support Residential on both 1st and 2nd level. And for 3 months for Nova. So I know what I am talking about!
I am not sure if OTE/Cosmote will read this article, but c’mon guys! IPv6? Sure! Give us a block of static ips! For you they are free, we already pay one of the most expensive internets in the continent and we get Jacques Merde from statics….oh and fix that 10% ratio of download to upload! Literally, the sync is already there, in FTTH even worse because the cable is 2500/1250. You already as ISP pay the same electricity weather you give me 100 or 1000 upload. The only difference is that you are wasting my time uploading things! And also me, hosting my own sites in my own machines, would save YOU international bandwith! The 10% upload is only a LOSE/LOSE scenario both for you and your customers and you know it. And you also know that when other ISPs like Lancom or Inalan do come eventually towards the south of Athens, that you will lose your clients just for that reason alone.
And cosmote? I have read about your 10GBPS internet trials, why don’t you shoot a bullet towards my location? What do you expect to learn from the Northern Suburbs of Athens? How fast facebook or youporn loads? C’mon be serious for a moment! I wink at you guys, I am ready! My network is 10gbps ready and I can run serious tests! I mean ok if your goal was to find how fast youporn loads, then you did the right move. I have no interest towards that! But if you really want to get stress tests and get answers from someone who knows a thing or two…I am here. I have always been here.
By now probably you wonder if there were negatives in that event and not just positives or networks history lectures. There were a few things that are negative from my point of view. The one is kinda debatable and there other not. I am saying this everywhere, the truth is what the facts are. I didn’t want to talk about politics, this event was about networks and security but those topics were raised and WERE 100% political.
You can skip the next 2 parts of this article if you do not want to read my thoughts on those topics.
First point was with people from Kosovo who “demand” their own TLD (.kos for example), as the people of RIPE said during the event, they go by the ISO standards. Kosovo isn’t a recognized country. There are political reasons for it, I as a Hellene, don’t recognize Kosovo as a country, not because I don’t like the people of that place nor because I am pro-Serbia, well I kinda like Serbia but for this scenario I let my BIAS aside. In this case, let’s say we all agree that Kosovo is sovereign country then we also legitimize the illegal occupation of the Northern part of Cyprus by Turkiye which is a NATO member and NATO did Jacques Merde about them! I don’t want to compare it to Ukraine. I stand with Ukraine, not because I hate Russia. No no no no, I have no hate towards anyone OR any nation. Russia did an unjust war and annexed Ukrainian land. I will let Ukraine aside for now but I will come back to it later.
So my first disagreement was about that, I hear and understand their point of view BUT I see the forest not the tree. Unless there can be some sort of international arrangement to free Cyprus and create Kosovo, fine!
Also you know it, we know it, everybody knows, IF Kosovo leaves Serbia, next day it will be part of Albania. Sorry Kosovo, your finger can’t hide your full body, I and we see you.
Second point I disagree and here comes the part I said earlier the truth is what the facts are.
There was 1(maybe more but not vocal?) people from Skopje, or Vardarska, you know the country in between Hellas and Serbia that has as flag a variation of the flag of Japan, they speak 1:1 Bulgarian, they are 60% Albanian, 30 Bulgarians, 9% Serbs and a tiny fraction Hellenes but because they are close to the birthplace of Alexander the Great, they identify as “North Macedonians”. Also known as the woke country or the birthplace of wokeness.
Sorry honey, I don’t care what you identify as! I go by evidence and facts. Bring to international forums evidence that the Macedonians (Ancient, Medieval and Modern) were/are Slavs and spoke and wrote Bulgarian in 4th century BCE and we can talk about. But since it is a FACT that Macedonians were/are/will always be part of the Hellenic family, you can take a hike.
Not only you offend us by stealing our history and cultural elements with all the cheap imitations you’re making but you are also offending your fellow slavic nations!
And I would like to ask people from slavic countries, how Macedonian do you guys feel?
Because IF Skopje is(it is not) Macedonia…then axiomatically all slavic nations are Macedonian in one way or the other.
Fan fiction is nice if you like the topic, for example Game of Thrones. But when it comes to history that has tons of evidence leaning only 1 way and literally nothing to support the woke country of Europe…I believe this case should have been closed years ago as “Dictatorship of South Serbia” when the population was more Serbian, today it should be “Dictatorship of West Bulgaria” or Dictatorship of East Albania”.
And what is the TLD of that country? .MK (Mortal Kombat?). FFS!
And how and why the ISO standards allowed that mockery of a country to have the .mk TLD way before the modern day Ephialtes betrayed us with the Prespa deal? So RIPE…I am sorry but what is going on here? Why Skopje that was in veto state until that trash deal and was known as FYROM(that M…porcodio) got a TLD of .MK and not XK as you guys suggested for Kosovo until their issue is resolved?
To conclude with that, for the topics raised by the people in the event I have noted only those 2 as major disagreements. Kosovo yes under conditions. Skopje no way Jose!.
That concluded my political placement on those 2 topics. If you opted to skip those, you can resume from this point.
There was a young guy from Turkiye who have raised some very nice points about access to information from a country that restricts information. I will try later on to find the videos and link them here. His questions were noteworthy.
And the last part I left it for Ukraine, in that event I have met Olena Lutsenko, the Managing Director of RETN Black Sea, a very lovely and beautiful lady which I could describe as a “Hero” or “Heroine” for her courage and her actions during the war with Russia. I won’t go into details as what I have suggested to Olena was: Write a book! I strongly believe that Olena ought to write a book about her experiences and her actions and we must read it! War is something nobody wants and her actions were super important during the first hours and days. I Salute you Olena!
I would like to thank Lancom, I have thanked them in person and I would like to thank them again in this article one more time, first for making this event which was amazing, super well organized and planned, secondly for the Macbook Air M3 that I won! This is the first (and most likely the last) expensive item I have ever won in…anything! I thought my M1 was fast compared to my Intel i7 6800HK that I had a few years ago but the M3 smokes the M1 in everything I have done so far and Apple have done excellent work in migrating from one laptop to another! Besides validating again my bank cards and reactivating some software such as parallels, Autocad, MS Office 2021 everything else was transferred without any issue!
I would like to thank RIPE, I have enjoyed the presentations and I have learned of some courses and tools that I didn’t knew and for sure will take advantage of!
And the other 2 sponsors, salumanus & IPv4.Global for helping in making this event possible!
Note: the article will be edited for adding pictures and videos and more information about some topics. This is not the final version, you can comment bellow with that you agree with and what you don’t. What I was fair or unfair with.
Thank you!
Links to photos and videos from the event:
https://www.ripe.net/membership/meetings/regional-meetings/see/see-12/webstream-recordings
https://www.ripe.net/membership/meetings/regional-meetings/see/see-12/photo-gallery
