Network and computer security is one of the hottest topics in the industry today. And no wonder; once connected to the Internet, an organization cannot make a move without considering the security aspects. Electronic commerce, virtual private networks (VPNs), voice over IP, even merely browsing the Web all have security implications. This tutorial will cover a broad range of network security topics, focusing on timely, relevant issues. It will define terms and concepts related to cryptography, viruses, Java/Active-X, security levels ("what does C2-level protection really mean?"), VPNs and tunneling protocols, IPsec and other secure protocols, and firewalls. Attendees will leave with a number of action items that can be brought back to the network!
This is an intermediate-level tutorial, assuming knowledge of computer, operating systems, network protocols, TCP/IP, and LAN/WAN topologies.
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About the speaker: Gary C. Kessler is a senior network security consultant at SymQuest Group, a neywork integration consulting company in South Burlington, VT. Gary is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, and has written 2 books and over 50 papers for industry publications. His areas of interest include security, VPNs, the Internet and TCP/IP, and fast packet technologies.
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Virtual private networks is largely a solution to a major corporate need — secure ubiquitous connectivity. A VPN transforms the Internet into a global private network over which secure business and commerce can be conducted. This talk introduces VPNs addresses the various technical issues in building and maintaining them.
About the speakers: Dr. Tim Strayer received his Ph.D. in 1992 and has worked as a computer scientist doing research on computer networks at both Sandia National Laboratories and BBN Technologies. While at BBN Technologies, Dr. Strayer lead a group building the network monitoring system of the GTE-I VPN Advantage Internet service product. Dr. Ruixi Yuan received his Ph.D. in 1991 and has conducted research and development on computer networks at NEC Computer and Communication Research Labs, GTE Laboratories, and BBN Technologies. Dr. Yuan was the architect of GTE Internetworking's VPN Advantage service that was launched in January 1999. Currently, he is the product manager for GTE Internetworking's VPN service.
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Measuring and evaluating the performance of Web servers presents a number of challenges for both researchers and Web service providers, including: 1) understanding what performance characteristics are important to measure; 2) how best to measure them; and 3) how to analyze and interpret what has been measured. This tutorial will address each of these questions, focusing on how the answers to these questions depend on the particular properties of Web workloads. We begin with an overview of Web server performance analysis and discuss the issues that must be considered when tests are performed. Next, we review Web performance characteristics and how these relate to server performance analysis. Finally, we will discuss a variety of tools and techniques which can be used for measuring and analyzing the performance of Web servers. The tools include workload generators (Webstone, SPECWeb96, SURGE, Webjamma and Webload) and monitoring tools (Webmonitor). Analysis techniques which will be discussed include basic distributional analysis and curve fitting as well as methods for analyzing behavior in the tails of distributions.
About the speaker: Paul Barford is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Boston University. His research interests focus on the areas of networked systems and protocols, performance analysis, and modeling and simulation with particular emphasis on the World Wide Web as an application. Mr. Barford has co-developed the Surge workload generator which statistically models Web user behavior, and which is currently being used at over 40 sites worldwide -- including major telecom and university research labs.
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