The Serbian Network Operators Group held its ninth annual meeting in Belgrade on November 9, 2023. The conference drew a large number of Serbian and international professionals from network communications, information infrastructure, multimedia services, cybersecurity, business operations support, and other industries. This year’s conference was made possible by patrons RNIDS and SOX, sponsors Team Cymru, Flexoptix, RIPE NCC, and PULSEC, and conference friends Unicom Telecom, ZelenData Center, and Orion Telecom.
Following remarks from Žarko Kecić, Head of ICT Services at the Serbian National Internet Domain Registry Foundation (RNIDS), Andronikos Kiryakou of Whalebone addressed the audience. He offered an in-depth account of the evolution of global and European initiatives to improve DNS security, which underpins a wide range of internet services we use on a daily basis, such as browsing websites, exchanging emails, and using various mobile apps.
Nenad Krajnović, Technical Director of SOX (Serbia Open eXchange), spoke on the problems of routing traffic between domestic operators and international networks, affirming the importance of cybersecurity in the professional community.
Dušan Stojičević and Dragan Jeremić of the RNIDS Board of Governors presented the concept for establishing a national DNS resolver and discussed its benefits, challenges, and viability with the audience. This effort aims to improve the Serbian internet’s resilience to outages caused by cyber attacks and other disruptions. The RIPE NCC’s Johan ter Beest presented forthcoming enhancements to the Atlas platform, which is a global network of probes used to measure internet traffic and identify network issues.
Streaming sports and other live events, which significantly increase network traffic and pressure their networks, present significant challenges for operators. Representatives from Serbia’s major streaming platforms, Telekom Srbija, SBB, and Orion Telecom, explained how they deal with these challenges.
RSNOG’s focus this year was also on how the largest Serbian operators care for the environment, their employees, and the community at large. Engineers got the opportunity to learn about a variety of topics from ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) specialists at Telekom Srbija, Yettel, and A1. These included how operators manage CO2 emissions, use power more efficiently, recycle their equipment and user devices, and collaborate on ESG matters with suppliers, employees, and the general public. Following this conversation, two green initiatives by Serbian operators were presented in more detail: A1’s installation of solar panels in its network of base stations and ZelenData Center’s three-year experience with immersion cooling.
The conference was concluded on a high note by Vadim Volovik from Yandex, who talked about the automation of this global cloud company’s network, and guest from Italy, Livio Morina, who presented PeeringDB – a freely accessible database of interconnection points for the global internet operators and content providers.
The main takeaway from the conference was that in the near future, internet networking professionals will have a great deal of work to address the challenges posed by trends like live event broadcasting, an increase in connected devices (Internet of Things), a growing volume of data transmitted through 5G and optical networks, and technologies like artificial intelligence, virtual, and augmented reality. With that, we look forward to the RSNOG 10th anniversary conference next year.