CONFERENCE MILESTONES

20 November 2005: Receive all Speaker & Instructor submissions
5 December 2005: Announce Selected Speakers and Tutorials
1 February 2006: All Presentation Materials are received from Speakers &
Instructors

22 February to 26 February 2006: Pre-conference Workshops
27 February to 28 February 2006: Tutorials
01 March to 02 March 2006: Conference
03 March 2006: APNIC Meeting

PROGRAM MATERIAL

TUTORIALS:

Tutorials are full-day workshops which focus on a particular subject
in-depth. They may be presented by a single Instructor, or a team of
instructors working together. Tutorial Instructors are encouraged to
also sign up to be a Speaker in the Technical Conference Program as
well. You can sign up to give a tutorial and/or conference session
presentation by following the instructions at the end of this message
for signing up as a speaker or instructor.

Tutorial topics that have been successful in the past, or which have
been requested for this year, include:

* Network security, IPSec, Auditing/Forensics, DDoS Mitigation, VoIP Security
* Address planning, conservation, responsibility and migration to IPv6
* High performance IP backbone routing and management
* BGP MultiHoming
* MPLS
* Network planning, management and traffic engineering
* Operation experiences and issues in deploying Internet Infrastructure
* Internet exchanges, construction, peering and collocation
* Operations, NOC, Helpdesk and other support aspects
* BIND, DNSSEC, Split Horizon DNS, and Reverse and multilingual DNS
* Broadband first/last mile access technologies
* Mobile and wireless technologies
* Content, Applications, streaming and multimedia infrastructure
* VoIP, Unified messaging, scaling e-mail infrastructure, Asterisk, etc.
* Hosted Essential Services (mail, DNS, etc), Server scaling, Open source
* Training the Trainers Workshops / Educators Track
* Quantitative Analysis for Internet Public Policy

The program committee will consider proposals for tutorials in any of
these areas, and also in new areas. There will be two days of
Tutorials. Tutorials last 1/2 day or a full day. If you have an idea
for a tutorial subject that is not listed, please feel free to submit
it to us.

TECHNICAL CONFERENCE SESSIONS:

The Main Conference Program for 2006 will be made up of 2 days with 3
tracks each day (Plus the APNIC and other concurrent AP* org Tracks
which is managed by various AP* groups independent of APRICOT).

Each Track has three 1.5 hour sessions on Wednesday and four 1.5 hour
sessions on Thursday. Each session can have 3 - 4 presentations
(therefore allowing 20-30 minutes per speaker) or a panel.

Sessions are chaired by persons of appropriate expertise in the
subject matter of the session, and will include ample time for
questions from the audience. If you would like to give a presentation
at one or more of the sessions, follow the instructions at the end of
this message for signing up as a speaker or instructor.

Sessions that are planned are:

* Access Networks (Wireless, DSL, Cable, Fiber, etc)
* Open Source Tools and Analysis
* Broadband Content / Gaming
* Peering
* Exchange Points Operations
* Routing / Backbone Technology & Techniques
* IPv6 Operations
* DNS
* ENUM
* VoIP
* Network Security Practices
* Network Auditing and Forensics
* DoS Mitigation Strategies
* Anti-SPAM and Net Abuse

Please submit presentation proposals that would fit in one of the above sessions.

When considering a presentation or tutorial, remember that the APRICOT
audience is mainly comprised of technical network operators and
engineers with a wide range of experience levels from beginners to
multi-year experience. There is a strong orientation to offer core
skills and basic knowledge in the tutorials and to address issues
relevant to the day-to-day operations of ISPs over the next 12 - 18
months in the conference sessions.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

APRICOT is a TECHNICAL conference and marketing and commercial content
is not allowed within the program. The program committee is charged
with maintaining the technical standard of APRICOT, and will therefore
not accept inappropriate materials. It is expected that the presenter
be a technical person and not a sales or marketing person. The
audience is extremely technical and expects that the speakers are
themselves very knowledgeable. All sessions provide time for
questions, so presenters should expect technical questions, and be
prepared to deliver insightful and technically deep responses.

FUNDING AND SUPPORT

Since APRICOT is a not-for-profit event that tries to keep the cost to
attendees low, we do not have too much money to pay the costs of
speakers. If you belong to a company or organization that can cover
you travel expenses, that is a big help. Only in exceptional
circumstances of hardship will APRICOT be able to consider assisting
with travel expenses of tutorial instructors.

Of course, Tutorial, Instructors will not have to pay any registration
fee to attend the conference or tutorials. And Conference Speakers do
not have to pay for registration to the Technical Conference.