The international R&E community includes many people whose lives are deeply affected by global crises.This Community Hub session explores the experience of living and working abroad while war continues at home. Through reflections from Ukrainian colleagues working for NRENs in Europe, we will share what it means to remain professionally active while family members, friends, and communities...
In addition to delivering a world class network infrastructure, NORDUnet and the Nordic NRENs drive a number of service evolution initiatives. This presentation will present a number of these and invite conference attendees to join us for conversations on pushing new services and technologies forward.
This session will provide an update on SIG-Quantum. Both SIGs are examples of community-led initiatives aiming at creating our next-generation infrastructure, in a way that is increasingly relevant to NRENs, National Metrology Institutes (NMIs), and research communities across Europe.
An inside look at HPE Networking’s journey from assisted operations to autonomous, AI driven networks, with a glimpse into how we’re future proofing security for the post quantum world.
National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) have built global impact through physical networks and identity federations. This session explores building a third pillar: collaborative human networks for cloud infrastructure. Internet2's Cloud Infrastructure Community Program (CICP) leverages hyperscaler standardization to create workforce multipliers. By sharing solutions, data, and skills...
Emerging standards - Verifiable Credentials, Open Badges 3.0, and the European Learning Model - combined with the EU Digital Identity Wallet are reshaping how learners own and share credentials. SURF, the Dutch NREN, is piloting this future through the Eduwallet project: a national testing ground integrating eduID, Edubadges, and wallet infrastructure across real education and labour-market...
Switch was among the first NRENs to establish a national identity federation as a production service in 2005. A first strategic realignment resulted in the launch of Switch edu-ID in 2015 to better support life-long learning and to increase synergies. Since then, we left the service architecture largely untouched – while the world around us continued to transform. Switch started the...
NRENs face rapid technological change, rising cybersecurity threats, regulatory complexity, funding pressure and increasing competition from hyperscalers. In this environment, resilience depends not only on technical strength but on internal alignment. This session positions communication as the “confidence layer” that enables clarity, trust and coordinated action. Introducing a practical...
The GÉANT backbone network has completed its packet layer migration to a new equipment vendor. This move has been made possible by the GÉANT Service Orchestrator, a result of cross-departmental collaboration between teams and, the software developed in the Workflow Orchestrator programme. Looking back on the migration, how have we managed pull this off, and what is our new vantage point into...
This proposal outlines an interactive co-creation session where participants explore the value of NRENs by imagining their absence. Through storytelling and small-group work, participants identify what fails, who is impacted, and why NRENs matter, from the evaluation of real experiences. The session encourages reflection on challenges in communicating NREN value to decision-makers and develops...
When a large-scale crisis hits our community, collaboration between NRENs is critical. But what really happens when the pressure is on? In March 2026, 9 N/RRENs and GÉANT took part in the first TALON exercise: a one-day, live crisis simulation played out in real time across organisations. In this talk, we share key insights from the exercise, with a focus on coordination and cooperation across...
The presentation outlines the evolutionary migration to fully automated network service lifecycle management in the PIONIER network while preserving complete user control and trust. Three stages are covered: (1) building a unified data model and a flexible Single Source of Truth component, (2) deploying network service orchestration, and (3) integrating with monitoring, advanced visualization,...
Libraries are core to the R&E mission—they provide access to knowledge that powers the academic enterprise. Yet in cybersecurity terms, they remain one of its least integrated components. While universities and NRENs have advanced identity and incident-response programs, libraries often operate alongside these efforts, relying on access methodologies that offer limited assurance and put...
Can cross-functional teams collaborate effectively when people bring different ways of working and perspectives? Over the past two years, we’ve worked together to build products that solve user needs. Along the way, we’ve identified four practical tips that help us break down silos, reduce friction, build trust, and collaborate better. This talk is for anyone working in or with...
This Community Hub session will highlight the GÉANT Twinning Programme as a strategic instrument for fostering impactful collaboration between National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) worldwide. Building on last year’s discussion-based format, this 30-45 minute session will be structured in two complementary parts to move beyond information sharing and actively catalyse new...
Generative AI is rapidly emerging as a transformative force in networking, reshaping how services are designed, configured and orchestrated. This presentation provides a practical and forward-looking exploration of how generative AI can significantly accelerate operations paving the way for more adaptive network services. It aims to provide a clear understanding of what generative AI can...
In the technical world of National Research and Education Networks, teams depend on accurate communication to deliver services, collaborate across borders, and respond to emerging issues. Yet unclear messaging remains one of the most persistent, and preventable, sources of friction. This session explores how miscommunication in chat channels, email, and meetings leads to duplicated work,...
The presentation will recap on the ways the GÉANT Association – and, more broadly, collaboration within the European R&E networking community - has been funded to date. It will reflect on what has worked well and what remains unstable and uncertain, share insights into future funding trends, and outline potential funding scenarios considering the current knowledge of the next Multiannual...
ESnet shares its pragmatic journey developing AI tools that deliver measurable improvements to Network Operations Center efficiency. Rather than chasing trends, ESnet focused on AI-assisted ticket resolution. This presentation details two concrete applications - Intelligent Resolution Guidance that proactively surfaces relevant documentation, and Adaptive Incident Summarization that generates...
Europe’s ambition for a borderless European Education Area is hindered by fragmented digital systems that burden learners with complex cross-border search, authentication, application, and recognition processes. National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), collaborating through GÉANT, offer a trusted, federated infrastructure -eduroam, eduGAIN, MyAcademicID, eduID and credential services...
We demonstrate efforts to collect threat intelligence by provisioning honeypot infrastructure and the synergy between honeypots and Large Language Models. We show data from the GN5-2 honeynet, including Kibana-based visualisations, and our pipelines, including sandboxing infrastructure. Monitoring with T-Pot and LangFuse enables behavioural analysis by tracking session abandonments caused by...
As NRENs, we historically leverage technology and build services to support research & education. A technology focused exercise that has long been successful. But the context in which NRENs operate has become more complex: a general market with more integrated services, our added value in relation to the market is no longer self-evident and the world around us is changing and getting more...
As networks grow in scale and complexity, traditional monitoring tools struggle to track subtle deviations and manage increasing incident volumes. Modern applications depend on stable latency, packet loss, and jitter, where small variations can degrade user experience. Machine Learning offers an intelligent approach to anomaly detection by learning baseline behavior and identifying deviations...
At Sikt, the Norwegian NREN, we make high‑impact decisions under uncertainty, balancing diverse stakeholders, federated governance, legacy systems, and limited budgets. Hypothesis‑driven development offers a disciplined way to earn trust by turning assumptions into testable bets, learning from small, safe experiments, and making decisions about when to continue, pivot, or stop. This session...
Across the research and education community, organizations face a dilemma where adopting cloud and containers has made service delivery more complex rather than simpler. RNP is addressing this complexity by building an Internal Developer Platform that offers well designed self service paths for common services. The platform is organized around four pillars: Speed, Safety, Efficiency, and...
SIRTFI defines how federated organisations should coordinate during security incidents, yet asserting compliance does not automatically build operational trust. In 2025, InCommon conducted a multi-day, story-driven cybersecurity cooperation exercise involving distributed Identity Providers and Service Providers. The exercise revealed gaps between IAM and security teams, inconsistent handling...
Global hyperscale outages in 2025, such as the AWS outage and the global Cloudflare outage, exposed the fragility of centralized cloud dependencies. For institutions in the Global South, these failures compound local constraints such as power instability, high latency, and legal requirements of the Data Protection and Privacy laws, turning cloud adoption into a sovereignty issue. This session...
This presentation explores how higher education institutions are adopting the European Higher Education Interoperability Framework (HEIF) to strengthen collaboration within European university alliances and beyond. Using practical use cases, we demonstrate how HEIF helps create shared structures and a common language that enable mutual understanding and long‑term planning for truly...
At GÉANT we have a service that has been online for more than 10 years: Firewall on Demand. This service is a firewall for your network, it integrates with your router platform and sends rules to block or rate limit certain IP addresses.
This software plays a crucial role in our network and the security of it. Over the years, we have added new features, bug fixes and went through multiple...
Over 20 European tech organizations, led by OpenNebula Systems, launched Virt8ra.eu in early 2025, an open source initiative focused on building Europe's first sovereign virtualization stack. Part of the €3B IPCEI-CIS project, this collaboration created a European technological ecosystem around vendor-neutral cloud-edge continuum management and virtualization. Virt8ra enables interoperability...
At the Munich University of Applied Sciences, MFA and passkeys were deployed in May 2025. After one year in production, we share results and lessons learned. We combine a controlled usability study with an ongoing longitudinal analysis to show why passkeys outperform OTPs and traditional FIDO2 security keys in usability, acceptance, and speed, and where they still struggle. Drawing on...
Across Europe, universities collaborate through alliances and cross-border programmes, yet students still struggle to discover courses beyond national and institutional boundaries. Course data remains fragmented, duplicated, and locked into local systems. This session presents fed-eduhub, a prototype for a federated, scalable architecture that interconnects national platforms such as...
This workshop will explore how risk management practices can be applied to strengthen cybersecurity across the research and education ecosystem. Participants will discuss practical approaches, shared challenges, and collaborative strategies to make NRENs and their connected institutions more resilient and secure.
Attendees are requested to please bring a laptop for this working session.
This community hub session will be an unplugged mini crisis management exercise in which you participate. No slides and no setup, just a short exercise that forces fast group decisions. It is a quick and very real way to show how pressure immediately changes team behaviour and how even a simple exercise can reveal the importance of clear roles, structured decision making and the basics of...
This interactive session focusses on the human aspects of cybersecurity. The session introduces community activities, shared resources like the Security Awareness Hub, and insights from the 2025 cybersecurity campaign. Participants engage with experts, discuss practical challenges, and explore the Digital Safety Fresco, a collaborative workshop helping non-technical users understand digital...
The GÉANT Security Innovation Lab is a new community-driven initiative designed to accelerate cybersecurity innovation across Europe's research and education networking ecosystem. It provides a shared space for NRENs and other GÉANT members to develop, test, and showcase security research projects - ranging from early-stage ideas to advanced prototypes requiring realistic network conditions....
Research organisations are under growing pressure to accelerate discovery while meeting increasing demands for security, compliance, and governance. This session explores how Secure Research Environments and Trusted Research Environments help bring fragmented data together in secure cloud-based environments - improving security posture, reducing friction, and enabling faster, safer research at scale.
This workshop will explore how risk management practices can be applied to strengthen cybersecurity across the research and education ecosystem. Participants will discuss practical approaches, shared challenges, and collaborative strategies to make NRENs and their connected institutions more resilient and secure.
Attendees are requested to please bring a laptop for this working session.
The goal of the FeduMEET project is to design, implement and test a multi-operator, federated videoconferencing service based on the eduMEET platform, with customisable points ofaccess and support for SSO integrations (such as eduGAIN).
“Should I use my credit card in this online shop?”, “Is this really a government portal?”, “Is it safe to click the link in this email?”, “Why does this webpage look so suspicious?”…Every day, users face online decisions that can expose them to phishing attacks, identity theft, and fraud. Yet most security tools provide little more than a warning message, without helping users truly understand...
As AI becomes embedded in research, the real challenge is not access to models but building them properly: reproducible, auditable, and sovereign by design.
This session explores how research teams are developing AI end to end using Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft Foundry and HPC within trusted, policy‑controlled cloud environments, from governed data and shared semantics through...
Are you fed up with looking up and copy-pasting information from existing documents into complex surveys?
Our tool uses AI to analyze your documents and provide suggestions, with citations showing where each answer came from. No black boxes: every suggestion is traceable, editable, and yours to accept or reject.
Built privacy-first for the European research and education community: your...
Derived from the OWASP Web Honeypot Project, Chameleon-REN deploys adaptive, low-interaction honeypots across National Research and Education Networks to capture, classify and share emerging threats targeting academic web application infrastructure. Dynamically mimicking REN-typical services, it generates real-time threat intelligence feeds for CSIRT teams, supports collaborative incident...
Fiber sensing is a broad concept that defines the capability within optical networks to leverage existing fiber infrastructure for advanced monitoring and control applications. It can encompass monitoring capabilities that measure static fiber/optical signal properties and/or sensing capabilities that detect dynamic changes in optical signal properties due to external perturbations.
Among the...
The GÉANT SIG–NOC (Special Interest Group for Network Operations Centres) is a group in the GÉANT community formed by members of Network Operation Centres (NOCs) as well as network engineers involved in the integration and optimization of NOC tools and processes.
SIG-NOC is a forum for exchanging and promoting ideas, experience and knowledge on NOC tools, functions, workflows, procedures and...
Envision a future where scientific progress accelerates at an unprecedented rate, condensing the time required for new discoveries from years to days or even hours. Artificial intelligence has already shown promise in expediting breakthroughs in fields like astronomy, genomics, and materials science, but these advancements have been isolated, driven by separate research groups working...
GÉANT’s network monitoring software stack has recently undergone a significant redesign to address scaling and operational needs. This presentation introduces the journey toward new data-processing approaches tailored to GÉANT’s environment, the benefits these changes have delivered, choices and compromises involved, and lessons learned along the way. The experience and outcomes shared are...
eduGAIN, the identity interfederation, enables researchers, teachers, and students to log into services worldwide using home organisation credentials. To remain the globally trusted infrastructure for Research and Education, we must enhance trust and modernize technology. This talk outlines a rethink of eduGAIN trust to improve attribute release, security, and interoperability. While...
This Community Hub session will be an opportunity to bring together representatives from several large science projects and perfSONAR developers in an informal, interactive setting. Short, focused presentations will highlight concrete use cases, deployment patterns, and monitoring architectures used in EuroHPC, WLCG/LHC, EUMETSAT, LOFAR, and other communities. Developers will give a concise...
This presentation reports on two years of progress in InterQnet, a U.S. Department of Energy project advancing scalable, heterogeneous quantum networks through a full-stack co-design approach. We share quantitative insights from large-scale simulations, error-correction-aware architecture studies, and integration with experimental testbeds such as ArQNet. The talk highlights lessons learned in...
Storage needs for research data are growing at an unprecedented pace. While datasets increase in volume, complexity, and retention requirements, the institutions are also expected to comply with security standards while collaborating in an international space. The storage solutions are often self-hosted and built using open-source storage components. Building these services from scratch, while...
Network observability is a crucial aspect of operations that is often supported by flow-based traffic monitoring. This presentation provides an evaluation of six actively maintained open-source flow collectors for sFlow and IPFIX data: Akvorado, GoFlow2, IPFIXcol2, nfdump, pmacct, and SiLK. These collectors enable self-sovereign flow collection, as they can be deployed on-premises on modern...
As the technology landscape changes, some good things remain the same. eduroam and certificate services remain two stalwarts in the NREN box of services for good reason. As eduroam and certificate services approach 15 years old in the US, we are continuing to learn a number of lessons in how to scale through cloud services, and grow with new relationships in adjacent but highly aligned...
RENU operates under constraints common to NRENs worldwide: limited resources, rising expectations, and constant pressure. Embracing “Digital Sisu” a mindset of courage, resilience, and determination, RENU transformed its national digital ecosystem by focusing on people and culture rather than hardware. This led to adopting DevOps as a philosophy, breaking silos, fostering shared ownership, and...
This Community Hub session will begin with two short presentations. The first will introduce the concept and objectives of EU AI Factories using the LUMI AI Factory as a case study, highlighting its services and value for different user communities. The second will present a practical use case: how LUMI is supporting a start up in developing an AI based diagnostic agent for private 5G networks.
In the past decade, there have been significant changes in how the network management plane is used, with many of these changes challenging long held assumptions around network isolation. There are several reasons for this including configuration automation, instrumentation/telemetry, and more dynamic traffic engineering - all of which are necessary for running a modern network. This talk...
The journey to MaliREN connectivity reflects a transformative pursuit to strengthen research and education across member institutions in Mali. MaliREN - the Mali Research and Education Network - was established to provide universities, research institutions, and innovation hubs with reliable, high-speed, secure and affordable connectivity for scientific collaboration. However, connectivity...
We're networkers - good at managing dependencies. But what about non-technical dependencies and need for service-related evolution? We have to go with the market flow and we have very little control or choice. This is daunting. These are forces far bigger than we are. What can we do? It's not as hopeless as it looks. Join us to explore dependencies up and down the NREN business model - from...
What does it take to connect Europe's most powerful supercomputers to the researchers who need them most? Join this session to hear directly from NRENs on the front line of the EuroHPC HyperConnectivity project what it means to onboard as a pilot site, what value it unlocks for your community, and what challenges and opportunities lie ahead. Whether you are already involved or interested in...
National Research and Education Networks increasingly require scalable and secure mechanisms to deploy monitoring services across distributed infrastructures. This presentation introduces the nmaas Active Monitoring use-case, which enables application deployment on remote compute clusters using the nmaas multi-tenant PaaS. The solution has been validated in practice by RENATER through a...
Since TNC25, we transformed HAWAT from experimental to production-ready on Internet2's network, with open-source containers available. The breakthrough is federated troubleshooting across organizations: our Looking Glass service lets organisations independently deploy and control what commands they expose, and HAWAT queries multiple instances to diagnose cross-network issues, isolating packet...
Network visibility has always been one of the most requested network features by RedCLARA users. The idea to be aware of everything moving within and through the network should define the new normal. With this concept in mind, RedCLARA Network Engineering Group (NEG) and Systems Engineering Group (SEG) have built the Integrated Monitoring Portal (IMP). Its goal is to become the best network...
Internet2 has accumulated data on eduroam US operations since 2018. What are the most useful and interesting questions to ask of this data, who should see it, and how can it be validated and delivered to this audience for maximum benefit?
Security in the eduroam login has been, and currently still is, a challenge.
Most eduroam providers still rely on passwords to authenticate the users, and need to provide their users with instructions how to set up their devices securely. While the Web makes a move towards passwordless authentication, eduroam still relies mostly on passwords. To address the challenges of current eduroam...
While Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming a core component of modern cybersecurity, its deployment in operational network environments remains a significant challenge. A key example is Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) that must process continuous data streams, respond to threats in real time, and adapt to evolving attack techniques, while, at the same time, remaining stable and...
It is hard to imagine a world without new media technologies. In my life, for example, podcasts play an integral part: They entertain me, help me stay informed and teach me about different topics on the go. And I am not alone: A [2025 global study by the international research firm YouGov][1] shows that two out of five people listen to podcast episodes at least one hour per week. So why not...
AI is already inside your network. The question is whether it is on your side. Research and education networks are deploying AI faster than they are securing it — monitoring tools, SOC automation, agentic network management systems — and these are being actively exploited. Not theoretically. Now. AI integrated into network operations is now a primary attack target — and most security teams...
The Europasinfonie project will stage the world’s first real-time pan-European distributed orchestra concert on 18 June 2027 in Dresden. In this performance, 62 string musicians of Dresdner Sinfoniker will perform live on stage, while wind, brass, percussion and choir musicians from 11 additional European cities – Athens, Birmingham, Brussels, Brno, Tallinn, Salzburg, Belgrade, Milan, Madrid,...
When did you last access an atomic clock via a US military system? Probably less than a minute ago - through your phone. Today, I want to show how Europe is building another way.
Every time your phone synchronises time or determines its position, it quietly relies on GNSS, primarily GPS and Galileo, delivering access to atomic clocks in space. These systems are at the basis of everything from...
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the European Union recommend transitioning to quantum-secure cryptography between 2030 and 2035. While Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) does not require specialized quantum hardware, it has to withstand the test of time, and it provides only security against quantum computational attacks. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) offers an...
At the South African National Research Network (SANReN), South African researchers can participate in global research efforts. We do this by ensuring that local researchers can share their data efficiently with international researchers and that they can access data generated or processed abroad as efficiently as possible. This has been made possible by the implementation of 100Gbps Data...
European Research Infrastructures (RIs) generate petabyte-scale datasets in domains such as climate science, atmospheric research, biomedicine, and imaging. While Open Science policies have improved data availability and FAIR compliance, practical reuse remains limited. Researchers often face barriers related to compute capacity, software environments, AI tooling, and secure access. Moving...
Supplier security and confidentiality clauses often fail for one simple reason: we use the same words, but we mean different things. My one key point: attach a one-page Supplier Meaning Guide to the contract - a support document that explains, in plain language, what we mean by key terms and expectations.
In five minutes I’ll demo the guide’s structure:
- “When we say…” → “We mean…” (e.g.,...
Session 1: Technical Details
This session will introduce the MetrANOVA project and its forthcoming software stack, highlighting how this technology empowers community participants to share data with collaborators in a controlled manner while preserving digital sovereignty. The agenda will cover:
- Project Overview - Covering the project's motivation, starting points, current...
This Community Hub event consists of interactively playing RADIUS clients, servers and requests, to understand how authentication works in the eduroam federation. Through a hands-on role-playing activity, we will simulate how eduroam components interact. Some people will take the roles of RADIUS servers and clients, and others will play requests, hopping from proxy to proxy until they reach...
The GN5-2 Wallets team is inviting you to participate in this interactive session.
Together with the audience we will look at the benefits wallets have to offer with respect to existing solutions and ask the question how we can leverage our experience and what role we can play in this field with the aim to encourage collaboration among NRENs, universities, and technology partners.
The...
Researchers worldwide face a growing tension between leveraging cloud services to accelerate discovery and meeting digital sovereignty requirements - but it doesn't have to be a choice. This session will explore how AWS built its infrastructure with sovereignty in mind, giving researchers / institutions ownership and control of their data: where it is stored, who can access it, how it is...
This presentation introduces a field-tested, sustainability-oriented implementation model for deploying digital infrastructure in extreme ecosystems, based on real interventions in the Páramo de Sumapaz and the Ciénaga Grande del Magdalena. It details how agile methodologies, academic collaboration, renewable energy systems, and low-impact connectivity solutions, such as high-altitude...
This session describes how the Nordic NRENs and NORDUnet work together to provide resilient, scalable, and cost‑efficient media services for research and education. The presentation highlights key insights, strategic choices, and practical examples of co‑operation.
Artificial intelligence has become integral to modern research infrastructure, yet access remains profoundly unequal. While large, well-resourced institutions rapidly deploy AI capabilities, smaller universities and historically underserved institutions face systematic barriers that widen the research capacity gap. This challenge transcends borders -research and education networks worldwide...
Universities across Europe are experimenting with generative AI tools in teaching and learning. Many early implementations, however, remain isolated pilots or generic chatbot services that are not integrated into institutional course infrastructure. As a result, AI tools are often used outside the context of courses, without clear links to course enrolment, learning environments, or...
Community Impact
The Metranova project also provides adopters with essential guidance, including policy examples, data classification models, and other resources. This support is intended to enable well-founded justification for data sharing, allowing organizations to accurately assess and communicate the associated risk profiles and benefits.
This session builds on the software...
Norway´s NREN, delivered by Sikt, is being renewed with new agreements on dark fiber and optical spectrum. The new network supports Terabit capacities, even more redundancy and lays the physical foundations for producing advanced optical services - like fiber optic sensing, high precision time and frequency transfer and quantum communication. The presentation will go through the procurement...
MediaCMS is an emerging open-source media management system for the educational sector, that exemplifies a much needed direction of open source project in times of digital sovereignty. This includes a user-centred platform that prioritises usability, workflow simplicity, institutional autonomy, and sustainable development models. While MediaCMS is a fully functional VCMS for institutions...
This lightning talk presents our initiative: Empowering Women in STEM in Palestine. This initiative empowers women under conflict and occupation through National Research and Education Network (NREN) services. Palestinian women face challenges due to occupation, including limited mobility to attend conferences, restricted access to research labs and high-speed networks, and difficulties...
Trust is the invisible infrastructure of every high-performing team, and in remote environments, it becomes even more fragile and even more critical. This talk blends storytelling, behavioral science, and practical leadership tools into a memorable five-minute experience designed to leave the audience thinking differently about trust in distributed teams.
Demystifying Coherent Optics for Network Professionals" is a practical, vendor‑neutral session designed to give conference attendees the tools they need to deploy and optimize 100G–800G coherent transceivers in real networks. The talk translates complex physical‑layer concepts - modulation formats, parameters like OSNR, Q‑values and link budgeting - into clear operational guidance, and pairs...
The future of the NREN community is shaped not only by the fibre we deploy or the services we scale. Across many emerging NRENs, sustainability is often framed as an infrastructure challenge involving resilience, redundancy, funding, upgrades. These are critical conversations, but they are not complete.
Imagine it’s tomorrow. Your grant isn’t approved. Your contracts are delayed. Your accounts payable are due next week. What’s your plan? Do you have cash reserves?
How many months can you survive? I’m here to talk about something every organisation depends on - money. Money is oxygen for any organisation - it keeps it alive. It pays people. It funds innovation. It absorbs shocks. It buys...
Observing random spikes in website traffic at odd hours? If you go to investigate what’s causing it, it’s just an endless amount of requests from a battalion of AI scrapers visiting your website for content to train their machine learning models on. It’s like the plague, they hunt you for your content and you’re out there battling it with a toothpick. In a more technical view, your toothpick...
Modern digital services generate enormous volumes of log data every second. When something goes wrong, performance drops, or users start reporting failures, engineers turn to logs to understand what happened. In theory, logs contain all the answers. In practice, finding them is slow, manual, and stressful. Teams must sift through millions of technical messages under time pressure, trying to...
In this talk, I will present a tool developed at GARR that converts YANG models into developer-friendly, type-safe RESTCONF clients in Python, ensuring runtime validation of network configurations. This allows for seamless and safe interactions.
This presentation details the deployment of a national-scale precision time and frequency distribution infrastructure based on White Rabbit (WR) technology, which runs directly over CESNET’s existing active DWDM network. This project moves beyond typical dark fiber deployments to offer a blueprint for NRENs seeking to maximize infrastructure utilization and support advanced services without...
At TNC 2025, RENU (Uganda) and RNP (Brazil) signed a Memorandum of Understanding, marking the beginning of a South–South collaboration between two National Research and Education Networks. One year later, this lightning talk reflects on what happened after the signature. The talk briefly presents how the partnership evolved from a formal agreement into concrete collaboration, including joint...
This talk is not about how "technology can" enable collaboration. It is about putting people first: How do "we actually want" to enable researchers, teachers, and learners to collaborate? Interpreting "Digital Sisu" as a call to action, we need to future-proof higher education institutions as spaces for critical thinking, community, and resilience. Currently, many developments, decisions, and...
Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform agriculture and strengthen climate resilience, particularly in regions where smallholder farmers face increasing environmental uncertainty. As a woman lecturer and researcher in computer science in West Africa, I believe that education and innovation must work together to address real-world challenges. This conviction led to this project...
This session introduces CSC’s journey toward more effective risk management by shifting from qualitative, point-based methods to a quantitative, decision-driven approach. It focuses on how risks can be modeled using probabilities, financial impact ranges, and expected loss to better capture uncertainty and support real business decisions. Participants will see how CSC has commenced the journey...
National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) worldwide face a common set of public affairs challenges in an evolving digital infrastructure landscape. Operating across diverse political and cultural contexts, they must engage policymakers, demonstrate the strategic value of connectivity, and position their infrastructures within national and international priorities. While approaches...
This session presents the development of Aalto AI Assistant, a secure generative AI service for teaching, learning, and staff work at Aalto University. The talk explores how trusted AI services can be designed for higher education, covering practical use cases, user needs, security considerations, and lessons learned from building an LLM-based application for a university community. It also...
AI is transforming software development across GÉANT and NRENs, boosting productivity while introducing new challenges in security, compliance, and trust. This presentation shows how the Software Governance and Support in is responding through structured practices - software reviews, license management, guidelines, and training on responsible AI-assisted development. We should also share early...
As competition for visibility and funding grows, NRENs must position themselves beyond technical infrastructure. This presentation explores storytelling as a strategic approach inspired by Blue Ocean Strategy, shifting communication from technology to human impact. Using the RNP case, it demonstrates how real-life stories transform users into protagonists and infrastructure into social...
Across Europe, municipalities face increasing pressure to deliver secure, privacy-compliant, and accessible digital services for education. These challenges are amplified by fragmented responsibilities, limited resources, and rapid technological change. By creating a centralized service and developing shared frameworks, automated support tools, and AI-powered advisory systems , we aim to...
Generative AI is rapidly entering higher education, yet most institutions rely on commercial, opaque systems that undermine autonomy, privacy, and pedagogical control. Karlstad University has developed a system for digitally sovereign AI chatbots built on open standards, open-source technologies, and institutionally governed infrastructure. Integrated via LTI and using WordPress as a modular...
Speech-to-text is rapidly becoming a core capability in teaching, accessibility and research, but many institutions struggle with trust, cost and data protection when relying on commercial AI services. This talk presents Sunet Scribe, a national, self-hosted Whisper-based speech-to-text service operated inside the Swedish NREN. Starting from concrete operational experience, we explain why...
Numerous activities are advancing state-of-the-art of authentication and authorization infrastructures, focusing primarily on establishing a trusted identity and enable collaboration across borders. Nevertheless, there are still often overlooked challenges that stems from a lack of visibility and control over who has access to what - and why. That can be addressed by an IGA system, as will be...
Network topology maps are fundamental to the identity of an academic network, being essential for both strategic communication and operations. In this context, the GNA-G GREN Map working group has been developing a tool based on hierarchical databases for mapping these topologies. Prior to 2025, the publication of a global map of academic networks was made unfeasible by the complexity of the...
In this session, the RIPE team will take you through some of their governance processes and why these are vital to the RIPE community,. The overview will look at:
- a high level overview “what is a RIR?”
- more detail on RIPE and RIPE NCC
- impacts on NRENS and academia, including new charging processes
Agentic AI systems can plan actions, call tools, analyse logs, and trigger real automation. While this enables powerful operational workflows, it also introduces serious risks: hallucinated decisions, loss of control, escalating costs, and unclear accountability. This presentation introduces Saz, a self-hosted agentic workflow engine designed to embed AI into operational environments through...
This presentation explores how Brazil’s National Research and Education Network (RNP) structured specialized support models to address the distinct demands of digital identity, video collaboration, and connectivity services. Through three dedicated operational cells, RNP combined technical specialization, collaborative practices, and a strong focus on user experience. The talk will highlight...
Expand your leadership toolkit and explore the critical intersection of psychosocial safety, neurodivergence, and related governance. As global jurisdictions strengthen their focus on these areas, the risk of non-compliance - and our opportunity for growth and inclusivity - has never been higher. This session will move beyond compliance requirements to provide essential frameworks for...
745,000 people die from overwork every year. 42-62% of IT infrastructure workers report burnout symptoms. 55% don't talk about it. This talk is personal. After surviving a suicide attempt driven by years of toxic work culture, I spent months turning my experience into research. The result: a study with 60+ sources documenting the structural causes of mental health crises in internet...
The devotion to helping our clients in NRENs, to getting to know them and go above and beyond, is well known, and laudable. It’s arguably a core part of our success. But what happens when that goes too far, when heroics become the norm? This talk will briefly touch on some of the causes of this kind of behaviour, but the focus is to provide support on how to improve the situation and change...
This presentation explains how CEDIA, Ecuador’s NREN, transformed well-being into a strategic lever for service excellence, earning international recognition as a result - not the goal - of a people-centered culture. By integrating psychometrics, a 90° performance model, leadership alignment, and Great Place to Work practices, CEDIA fostered trust, closeness, and genuine care across teams....
nmaas is an open-source, multi-tenant platform designed to simplify deployment and lifecycle management of applications across distributed Kubernetes environments. Building on the nmaas Active Monitoring use case presented during the main programme, this Community Hub session provides a practical continuation through live and pre-recorded demonstrations showcasing how the nmaas Platform can...
Data once inaccessible or single-use can now drive research and service development in the R&E community. Different initiatives explore collecting, sharing, and transforming data into machine-actionable datasets. Yet key questions remain: how can NRENs enable research use, what use cases exist, and what can we learn together?
This session brings together five perspectives to examine how...
This presentation explores how DevOps automation can be used to build digital systems that remain reliable when things go wrong, combining robust technology with the right engineering mindset. Framed around Digital Sisu, it acknowledges that failures such as outages, bugs, and human error are inevitable and must be expected in system design. Drawing on real-world NREN experience, the session...
The TNC26 theme “Digital Sisu” embodies inner strength, tenacity, determination, and courage when facing adversity. But what happens when the adversity isn’t visible, but an invisible assault on the thinking that guides our decisions?
We understand technical security deeply, but information security must include our own thinking. In an increasingly uncertain world where sovereignty and...
Theme: AI Facilities and Research User Communities
Initiated by: GÉANT AI NREN Group
Target Audience: Open to all TNC participants
Abstract
AI Factories and large‑scale AI infrastructures are being deployed rapidly across Europe. However, many user communities—particularly in research, education, environmental sciences and cultural heritage—are not yet structurally...
For National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), true sustainability extends far beyond laying fiber. It requires a strategic pivot from pure connectivity to a thriving "value-added ecosystem." This presentation showcases the operational framework of the Oman Research and Education Network (OMREN), a compelling case study in how NRENs can secure their future through a triad of human...
Quantum technologies are increasingly progressing as a strategic priority for research, digital infrastructure, and secure communications worldwide. Significant progress is being made across all main domains of quantum technologies—quantum communication, quantum computing, quantum sensing, and quantum metrology. In this evolving landscape, NRENs are increasingly expected to play an enabling...
CertiDigital is a university-led shared credential service, built by 23 Spanish universities and deployed as a national platform on RedIRIS, the Spanish academic and research network.
The initiative delivers a reusable technical infrastructure that any university in the Spanish university system can use to issue digital certificates based on the European Learning Model, with two...
Internet2 and CAIDA, with sponsorship from the National Science Foundation, are building a community-focused toolset to help R&E operators better understand how current BGP policy affects routing outcomes, and to support safer deployment of policies that improve security and resilience.
The toolset includes:
- Global R&E BGP Route Report
A route-level view across participating...
In Europe’s research and education networks, cyber‑threats have evolved from isolated events to a constant, hidden condition that permeates every layer of digital science. Nation‑state actors probe critical infrastructure while opportunistic ransomware gangs attack university mail servers, often evading signature‑based antiviruses, rule‑driven firewalls and static SIEM correlation. Advanced...
The identity interfederation eduGAIN, or federation of federations, makes it possible for researchers, teachers and students to log into services around the world with their home organisation credentials. eduGAIN is currently built on SAML, a technology that has served the research and education community well for many years. Now, SAML is considered a legacy technology, and development has...
5 years of growing the eSO program from a single state into 12 states, serving hundreds of schools, libraries, and museums have given Internet2 unique insights into how these deployments differ from deployments for traditional higher education and research organizations. In sharing these experiences we hope to start a dialog with the international eduroam community on ideas on how to serve our...
This BoF is for people interested in eduVPN. It aims to present the work done since our last meet-up at TNC25 as well as the current roadmap for the software, answer questions from NRENs and research and higher education institutions and gather new requirements
Continuing from the well-attended EDI BoF in Brighton last year which saw broad support from the community, we aim to continue the conversation on the actions currently being undertaken by NRENs and the wider research and education community. The session will also explore how, as a community, we can more effectively share experiences and best practices around equality, diversity, and...
We from Tampere University invite participants to experience accessibility through an unplugged, discussion‑driven session based on the Accessibility Points created by TACCU – Tampere Accessibility Unit. These Accessibility Points were designed to raise awareness and offer hands‑on encounters with different accessibility tools. For this Community Hub session, we are bringing the Observing...
[to the reviewers: if this BoF is accepted, we would be greatly helped if overlap could be avoided with both the eduvpn bof and cnaas bof, in case of course that either of those is accepted as well! Don't take this as hubris that we blindly assume we'll be accepted upon mere submission ;-) ]
The FileSender Board would like to invite all interested persons (users, operators, developers,...
To strengthen global collaboration, we first need to identify and share the engagement mechanisms that make it possible and then scale these collaborations across regions and around the globe. This BoF session acknowledges the previous TNC BoFs that have explored member engagement from a marketing and dissemination perspective, showcasing what works in communicating with and involving members...
The Girls in STEM MENA initiative, led by the Hashemite University in Jordan, was created to open doors for girls from disadvantaged regions who rarely have access to scientific research environments. Each summer, the program hosts selected students on campus, where they are introduced to laboratory work, scientific thinking, mentorship, and the real-world possibilities of careers in STEM....
NRENs across the world are taking on growing responsibility for enabling secure, sovereign, and compliant cloud use for research and education. The Global Cloud Café offers an open, informal space for NRENs from all continents to share short, 10-minute updates on their roles, current challenges, and lessons learned. The session will also provide an update on the feasibility study exploring...
Digital research infrastructures depend not only on technical performance, but fundamentally on trust. This presentation develops one central idea: law functions as an operational trust infrastructure within digital research and education networks.
In this Birds of a Feather session, we invite participants interested in the security aspects of federated authentication and authorization. We will open the session with a brief introduction to the eduGAIN CSIRT and an overview of its role and capabilities.
To stimulate discussion, we will present several real-world incidents that the team has handled in recent years, along with the...
Information Influencing and Thinking – It's About You
Cognitive Security and Digital Sisu
The TNC26 theme "Digital Sisu" embodies inner strength, tenacity, determination, and courage when facing adversity. But what happens when the adversity isn't visible, but an invisible assault on the thinking that guides our decisions?
we understand technical security deeply, but information...
The Management & Leadership Development Programme (MLDP) has supported internal leaders in strengthening clarity, ownership, accountability, and collaboration across distributed environments.
Now, we are exploring how MLDP can be adapted and offered to Members.
This 90-minute BoF session will serve as both:
- A practical leadership taster session
- The official launch and...
A DRE (Digital Research Environment) provides the European researcher with a dynamic catalogue of accessible digital services within an intuitive portal or workspace. The GÉANT community DRE platform (based on the SURF Research Cloud) is both functional and configurable, allowing sophisticated researcher identification and project affiliation, and controlled consumption of general and bespoke...
Cyber threats are increasingly sophisticated, transnational, and persistent—posing significant risks to research and education infrastructures worldwide. At TNC25, the concept of the Security Policy Alliance (SPA) was introduced to CEOs as a strategic initiative to unite NRENs in a global alliance for cybersecurity policy alignment, intelligence sharing, and collective resilience.
The...
