LCN '98

23nd LCN Technical Program: Tutorials

Last update: 3 October 1998


Frame Relay Network Management

Presenter: Dr. Parag Pruthi, Niksun Inc. and Qmetrix International Inc.

The growth of Frame Relay networks in recent years has been as high as 400% per year and has resulted in unplanned network configurations which are not very easy to manage and control. Also, open Frame Relay standards allow a carrier to integrate different vendors' products into their infrastructure. This raises various issues related to network management such as centralized management, interoperability, diagnostics, etc. In this tutorial we will cover several areas of Frame Relay network management including looking at various open as well as vendor specific solutions.

About the speaker: Dr. Parag Pruthi is currently President of Niksun Inc. and Qmetrix International Inc. From 1987-1996 he was with Bellcore where he worked on many aspects of communications. He developed various techniques and tools for conformance, interoperability and performance testing of networks such as X.25, ISDN, SS7, Frame Relay and ATM. Based upon several years of measurement experience he started research on the topic of fractal traffic modeling using chaotic maps and received his PhD. from the the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden in 1995. Currently, he is using real network traffic data from several different networks to conduct research and analysis of traffic flows from high-speed communication and wireless networks. The focus of the work is on traffic management, network/switch performance, optimization and planning to support end-to-end application level QoS. To support the requirements for real-time traffic visualization and analysis of network conditions he is developing various non-intrusive distributed technologies for monitoring and managing WAN (e.g. Frame Relay, ATM) and Enterprise (e.g. Fast Ethernet, FDDI) networks.


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Computer Network Security

Presenter: Dr. Ed Krall, Motorola

As computer network traffic grows with the popularity of publicly accessible networks, so do the threats to confident use of those networks. At the same time, increased computer power makes it possible -- easy -- for malefactors to share their "expertise" with anybody. The purpose of this tutorial is to highlight the problem areas, provide some resources for amelioration, and generally to raise awareness of the need for computer and network security.

Course Level/Intended Audience: The tutorial is aimed at computer and network users for whom security awareness is relatively new.

Topics to be covered include:

  1. Information Warfare
    1. Taxonomy
    2. Vulnerabilities, Threats and Risks
    3. Countermeasures
    4. Cryptography
  2. Secure Messaging
    1. What is the problem
    2. Encryption
    3. Digital Signature
    4. Tools and Products
  3. Public Key Infrastructure
    1. Certificates
    2. Policy
    3. Current Issues
      • Key Escrow
      • Certificate Revocation Lists
      • Export
  4. Resources
    1. Firewalls and Virus Checkers
    2. Network Assessment

About the speaker: Edward J. Krall is a project manager for Motorola's Information Security Division in Scottsdale, Arizona, working on both commercial and US government computer system security programs. He has had over twenty years experience in research and development activities, including eleven on assignment from NCR to MCC, the Austin-based research consortium. There he was responsible for both technology development and creation, and for technology assessment and transfer. Before that, he architected and product-managed the development of NCR's proprietary system development language, NCRL. Prior to joining NCR, he taught Computer Science at the University of Dayton for four years. He has a doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, and is a member of the IEEE Computer Society and the ACM.


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Web Infections and Protections

Presenter: Rodney Lancaster, Geoquest

This Tutorial will discuss why web infections are inevitable in any large population of systems and what technologists, system administrators, security personnel, software developers, and computer end-users can do to protect their systems, programs, and data. At the conclusion of the Tutorial attendees should be able to evaluate their risks of getting an infection across a network, be an informed reviewer of security measures they are currently using, and be able to plan steps to reduce infections and resulting damage.

Course Level/Intended Audience: This session will be inclusive and accessible to experienced end-users, developers, system administrators/managers, application architects, security managers, and network managers.

Topics to be covered include:

  1. The New Demographics of Computing
    1. Larger populations are vulnerable
    2. Commodity Software are undifferentiated
    3. Updates are not widely distributed
    4. No easy distribution channels exist
    5. Perceptions of end-users may be problems
    6. Misplaced faith in developers
    7. Computing Paradigm shift
    8. Development Paradigm shift
    9. The tool has grown into a consumer industry
    10. User populations vary in literacy
    11. Perceptions of usefulness
    12. Cost of capacity dropping rapidly
    13. Casual use is becoming more intensive

  2. Java as an agent implementation example
    1. The developer/implementation viewpoint
    2. The marketing end-user viewpoint
    3. The system manager viewpoint
    4. The infection developer viewpoint

  3. The process of infections
    1. Infection Models
    2. The developer/implementation viewpoint
    3. The marketing end-user viewpoint
    4. The system manager viewpoint
    5. The infection developer viewpoint

  4. Operating in a chronically infected environment
    1. The developer/implementation viewpoint
    2. The marketing end-user viewpoint
    3. The system manager viewpoint
    4. The infection developer viewpoint

  5. Alternate models of infections
    1. Predator/Prey
    2. Infectious Agent Propagation
    3. Criminal Society Terrorism
    4. Mutations introduced by radiation
    5. The Tax Code
    6. Addiction

  6. Example of Chronic Infections
    1. Java based
    2. Browser based
    3. Macro based
    4. Security breaches

  7. Implications for network managers
    1. Denial of service attacks
    2. Bandwidth consuming attacks
    3. Signal intelligence attacks
    4. Proxy attacks
    5. Info-war scenarios

  8. Implications for a network based chronic infection
    1. Reservoirs of infection
    2. Backup as preservation
    3. Effectiveness of network based protection mechanisms
    4. Combinatorial attacks from multiple systems

  9. Architecture against chronic infections and hostile environments
    1. High error environments
    2. Fault Tolerant architecture and implementation
    3. Fault Tolerant functional design against threats
    4. Audit, History, Log, and Notification processes
    5. Techniques for detecting attacks
    6. Techniques for countering infections

  10. Speculations about future threats and environments
    1. WinTel Environments
    2. Unix Environments
    3. Cross-platform vulnerabilities
    4. Rapid evolution of threats

About the speaker: Rodney Lancaster is a senior technical specialist with over 15 years of experience in computing and management information systems. His daily work includes configuration management, operating system support, network configuration, user security issues, and fixing bad problems. His strengths are in managing, performing, and teaching complex systems management, architecture, support, and creation. Key capabilities include a deep technical knowledge of UNIX-based systems of all types, strong network background in Local Area Networks, Campus-networking, and Wide-area computing. Personal strengths include an internationally known and proven capability to transfer his knowledge and strengths to other organizations and staffs, strong skills at communicating highly complex and sometimes obtuse technical information, extensive experience with managing chaotic and fragmented work environments, and bringing an objective oriented perspective to the task at hand. Business capabilities include marketing and sales support, logistics, office automation, and small business management.


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VPN Technology Roadmap

Presenter: Wray West, Indus River Networks

The growth and acceptance of the Internet into the business world has opened the opportunity to create Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) over the Internet to interconnect remote users and corporate. The great cost savings and flexibility of access methods has fueled interest in the technology and many articles have explored these aspects in depth. Once these advantages have caught the user's attention, there are many technical aspects to understand to evaluate different implementations and make intelligent decisions. This tutorial will provide a survey of these technical issues and implementation techniques that address them. At the end of the tutorial, attendees should be able to understand distinguishing characteristics of VPN implementations and discuss the merits and choices involved in the many technologies required when implementing a VPN.

Course Level/Intended Audience: This session will expect the listener to be familiar with the roles of firewalls, routers, remote access, and wide area networking in data networks. Attendees do not need prior experience with VPNs although we will quickly go into depth. The information in this tutorial will be valuable to those who manage or design wide area networks or have responsibility for network security.

Topics to be covered include:

About the speaker: Wray West is Chief Technical Officer and Co-Founder of Indus River Networks located in Acton, MA (http://www.indusriver.com). Wray co-founded Indus River after 20 years of executive management and technical positions at Xircom, Primary Rate Incorporated, Data General and several other start-ups. His broad background includes development management and design of large-scale data and voice communications systems, operation of enterprise WANs and LANs, and client/server networking products. Wray's role as CTO is to apply existing and emerging technologies to identified customer and market needs. He has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from MIT and is a member of IEEE.


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Voice over IP: Issues and Protocols

Presenter: Prof. Raj Jain, The Ohio State University

Analysts are forecasting a growing market for Voice over Internet Protocol products and services. Is IP ready for it? What protocols and technological innovations are required to make this possible?

In this one-day tutorial, we explain what is required to support voice communications over IP networks. Recent and upcoming network architecture advances, standards, and protcols that will improve the performance of voice over IP networks will be described. This includes support for quality of service, multicasting, streaming, and compression. Organizations and leading products in this area will also be mentioned.

Contents:

About the speaker: Raj Jain is a Professor of Computer Information Sciences at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. He received a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Harvard in 1978 and is the author of award winning book entitled Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis, published by Wiley and FDDI Handbook: High-Speed Networking with Fiber and Other Media published by Addison Wesley.

Raj Jain is an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Fellow and is on the Board of Directors of MED-I-PRO Systems, LLC, Pamona, CA, and on the Board of Technical Advisors to Nexabit Networks, Westboro, MA. He is also a consultant to several networking companies. He is on the Editorial Boards of Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, Computer Communications (UK), Journal of High Speed Networking (USA), and Mobile Networks and Nomadic Applications (NOMAD).

See http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~jain/ for further information.


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