A community of volunteers, drawn from the stakeholders who design, maintain and safeguard the computer networks of the Caribbean, is actively partnering with like-minded professionals from other parts of the world to speed up the development of the Internet in the region.
The volunteer group is called CaribNOG—short for the Caribbean Network Operators Group—and they are scaling up their outreach efforts in 2019, according to Stephen Lee, Program Director.
“It’s a tale as old as the Internet itself. Network operator groups, more commonly called NOGs, have been around since the very early days of the Internet, serving the critical function of enabling the human connections that undergird the physical development of computer networks. In 2019, CaribNOG is focused on deepening those human connections, both within the region and beyond,” he said.
Lee is also the co-founder of Arkitechs, a firm that provides technology solutions focused on delivering strategic services in the areas of enterprise communications, IT infrastructure, cloud services, multimedia delivery, mobile solutions and business intelligence.
He announced several highlights of CaribNOG’s 2019 calendar during a lightning presentation at the seventy-fifth meeting of the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG), held February 18 to 20 in San Francisco, California, USA.
In April, Edward Mc Nair, Executive Director of NANOG, will deliver the keynote address at the next regional meeting of CaribNOG, to be held in Bridgetown, Barbados from April 10 to 12. His keynote will focus on the crucial role NOGs play in supporting the human network needed to facilitate physical network development.
The upcoming CaribNOG meeting follows the next public policy meeting of the American Registry of Internet Numbers, ARIN 43, which takes place at the same venue from April 7 to 10. ARIN also recently announced an expanded Caribbean outreach program for 2019, focusing on member outreach, internet security and resilience.
In June, CaribNOG will support the fifth meeting of the Caribbean Peering and Interconnection Forum (CarPIF), to be held in Georgetown, Grenada. CarPIF is an annual conference for internet service providers, data centre managers, internet exchange point coordinators, content delivery network operators and technology professionals, who come together to exchange practical knowledge and strike deals to develop and improve the region’s Internet sector. Content providers such as Google, Akamai and Facebook have regularly attended at the event.
A pair of workshops in Dominica in March and St Kitts and Nevis in June will focus on network resilience and disaster preparedness. These remain significant points of focus for CaribNOG activities in 2019, as recovery efforts continue to roll out across the region, following the devastation of the 2017 hurricane season.