As CTO and Chief Architect of the Service Provider Division at Cisco Systems, David defines the strategy, design and development of the division's transport and mobility equipment, core, edge and access routers, and operating system. He leads research and development of new technology via tight partnerships with customers and academia and his work is found in multiple standards bodies. He also works closely with packetcom providers on the evolution and architecture of their networks and emerging services. David has held the roles of software architect for IOS-XR; co-system architect of the CRS-1 & CRS-3 multi-terabit router & the ASR900; and co-system architect of several next line cards, route processors and service blades in Cisco’s Service Provider portfolio.

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Dr. Daniel Obi Awduche is a Fellow in Verizon Communications Corporate Technology Organization, where he focuses on IP Technology and Cloud Service Delivery, encompassing business models, product development, technology strategy, architecture, and planning. He has held various technology leadership and management positions at Verizon and predecessor companies. Previously, he led the Internet engineering organization for Verizon Business. Prior to the acquisition of MCI by Verizon, he managed MCI's Internet Engineering Organization responsible for architecture, design, vendor technical management, peering administration, and lifecycle engineering management of MCI's public IP infrastructure. Within the industry, he is notable for pioneering the concept of Multiprotocol Lambda Switching, now called Generalized MPLS (GMPLS), and for championing the development and standardization of MPLS traffic engineering technology. He has served as Guest Editor of IEEE Communications Magazine (December 2006 and October 2007), Guest Editor of IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (October 2004), and Guest Editor of Proceedings of the IEEE (September 2002). His academic background includes the MS degree in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; PhD degree in Information Technology from George Mason University; and MBA degree (concentration in Finance and Entrepreneurship) from George Mason University.

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Hannes Gredler is the CTO of RtBrick Inc., where he is working on 3rd generation routing software targeted to open networking hardware. in his previous stint Hannes has been 15 years with Juniper Networks working on the design and implementation of the BGP, OSPF, IS-IS, MPLS routing and signaling protocols.

Since 2013 Hannes serves as a co-chair of the IETF IS-IS working group. Hannes is the author of "IS-IS the complete reference" and holds 20+ patents in the space of IP/MPLS. Hannes has received his M.S. in “System Engineering, Manufacturing and Automation" from the Technical University of Graz, Austria.

He is a proud father of four and an active Aikido practitioner.

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Russ White is an architect a LinkedIn who writes regularly here and at 'net Work. Russ is CCIE #2635, CCDE 2007:001, is a Cisco Certified Architect, and has earned an MSIT from Capella University and an MACM from Shepherds Theological Seminary. He is currently working towards a PhD.

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As CTO and Chief Architect of the Service Provider Division at Cisco Systems, David defines the strategy, design and development of the division's transport and mobility equipment, core, edge and access routers, and operating system. He leads research and development of new technology via tight partnerships with customers and academia and his work is found in multiple standards bodies. He also works closely with packetcom providers on the evolution and architecture of their networks and emerging services. David has held the roles of software architect for IOS-XR; co-system architect of the CRS-1 & CRS-3 multi-terabit router & the ASR900; and co-system architect of several next line cards, route processors and service blades in Cisco’s Service Provider portfolio.

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Hyde Sugiyama is Senior Principal Technologist at Red Hat APAC Office of Technology. Hyde has been with Red Hat for three years, working on SDN/NFV/ICT solutions development and joint GTM with NFV partners. He has 28+ years experience in the Information and Communications Technology industry. Prior to Red Hat, he worked at Juniper Networks as a Director of R&D Support driving JUNOS SDK software development ecosystems and IP Optical collaboration development in Japan and APAC for 10 years. Also he worked at Service Providers including Sprint and UUNET in both team leadership and individual contributor.

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Alan Sardella runs product and technical marketing for the OpenDaylight and OPNFV projects.

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Hiroaki Harai received his Ph. D. degree from Osaka University, Osaka, Tokyo. He is a Director at National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Tokyo, Japan. He joind NICT (Communications Research Laboratory at that time) in 1998. He engaged in optical network and new-generation network.

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Bijan Jabbari is the founder of Isocore Corporation.  He helped the industry with the first deployment of MPLS and subsequently its adoption by service providers and large corporations in their networks. He has made substantial contributions to standardization bodies for Internet and Wireless technologies. He has contributed to research on protocols and admission control in packet networks including next generation interne access, backbone, and applications. He has helped the industry in the areas such as call control, routing and signaling, mobility, enhanced services, ATM, MPLS, GMPLS, VPNs and network restoration.

He is the past chairman of the IEEE Communications Society technical committee on Communications Switching and Routing. Dr. Jabbari is a Fellow of IEEE, recipient of the IEEE Millennium Medal, the Washington DC Metropolitan Area Engineer of the Year Award. He received the PhD degree from Stanford University, Stanford, California, in electrical engineering.

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Wassim is a principal engineer at Ericsson in the San Francisco Bay area. He holds a masters degree in Mobile Networks and Services from Ecole nationale supérieure des Télécommunications de Bretagne.

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Bin Wen is a Principal Engineer (Datacenter Design & Engineering) at Comcast Cable.

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Rob is a Principal Solutions Architect at Red Hat. He holds a Bachelor of Science (B.S) degree from Appalachian State University.

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As the AVP of Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Architecture & Strategy for AT&T, Toby Ford leads technology efforts around AT&T's cloud offerings both internally and externally focused. Currently, Mr. Ford is responsible for shepherding SDN and NFV projects on to AT&T’s Common Cloud platform. Toby served as CTO for USi, which was acquired by AT&T in 2006. Previously, Mr. Ford held positions at Cornell University, ARINC, TeleCommunication Systems, and his own company in the Netherlands. Toby is also a member of the OpenStack Board of Directors.

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Nicolai Leymann is working in his 12th year for Deutsche Telekom as a chief architect for IP based networks. Nicolai is leading the IP-Multicast group of the Technical Competence Center of T-Group (T-Group consists of Deutsche Telekom and other European Telcos like Slovak Telecom) and is also coordinating the "Seamless MPLS" activities.

His major focus is the network and service architecture of “T-Entertain” – the Triple Play service of Deutsche Telekom – as well as the architecture of the upcoming Next Generation Network of Deutsche Telekom. His work includes the integration of technologies - eg. IP-Multicast, VPLS etc. - in MPLS networks and VPN scenarios. Mr. Leymann is responsible for several international projects related to network architectures (covering technologies like IP Multicast, MPLS, VPLS, Multipoint-Services, Backbone- and aggregation network design, VPNs, IPTV).

He is also involved in the standardisation process for Multicast services in MPLS and VPN environments and is looking into new backbone technologies and the evolution of MPLS. He is working on the coordination of standardization activities related to IPTV within Deutsche Telekom and is board member of the OpenIPTV Forum.

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Andrew G. Malis is a Distinguished Engineer at Huawei Technologies. He specializes in product and network architecture and future evolution; standards leadership (internal and external to the company); customer consultation; and SDN, NFV, IP, MPLS, Ethernet, and other telecom and data networking protocols. Previously, he has held senior engineering positions at Verizon, Tellabs, Cascade Communications, BBN, and other industry-leading organizations. He also holds standards leadership positions as Services Area Director and Technical Council Member at the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) and as a Working Group co-chair and a member of the Routing Directorate in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). He has held leadership roles in numerous other standards organizations, including board memberships and president/chairman. He has written and contributed to many technology standards, including having authored 39 IETF RFCs, and has spoken and chaired at numerous industry conferences.

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Alex Henthorn-Iwane is the Vice President of Marketing at Kentik. Henthorn-Iwane has more than 20 years of experience bringing new technologies in networking, security and software to global markets. Henthorn-Iwane leads the global marketing strategy for Kentik and help the company bring its innovative story and solutions to network-dependent organizations around the world.

Prior to joining Kentik, Henthorn-Iwane was VP of Marketing at QualiSystems, where he oversaw worldwide marketing at the industry's leading supplier of DevOps cloud orchestration software for hybrid IT infrastructure, and Packet Design Inc., a provider of network management software founded by serial entrepreneur Judy Estrin. Prior to that, he held product management roles at CoSine Communications, Corona Networks, Lucent Technologies and Livingston Enterprises.

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Qin Wu is a L3SM WG co-chair at IETF, Researcher and Standards project manager at Huawei. He received his PhD in control engineering from Nanjing University of Science and Technology.

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Dr. Yoichi Sato is a director at NTT Communications.

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Rajesh Rajamani is the Director of Product Marketing at Spirent Communications and has global product management responsibilities for NFV, Routing and MPLS portfolios in Spirent's Cloud & IP BU. Prior to Spirent, Rajesh has worked in Century Link, Redback Networks and Nortel in Engineering, Product management and Strategy roles. Rajesh obtained a Master’s degree in Business from Duke University and an undergraduate degree from Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai.

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Tom is a Distinguished Engineer in the PSD CTO Office at Juniper Networks where he is responsible for leading all aspects of Software Defined Networks and Network Programmability. Tom has a new book out called SDN: Software Defined Networks, An authoritative Review of Network Programmability Technologies on O’Reilly Publishers in August 2013.

Prior to Juniper Tom was a VP/Senior Principle Software Architect at CA Technologies where he is responsible for architecture and standards leadership around CA’s network infrastructure management and service assurance products. Prior to joining CA Technologies, Tom held Distinguished Engineer and Lead Architect roles at Huawei Technologies, BT and Cisco Systems.

Tom is an active participant in the IETF, ITU, and IEEE. He is co-author numerous protocol, architecture and MIB documents in the MPLS, BFD, L2/L3 VPN, MPLS-TP, pseudo-wire, and traffic engineering areas, including being a co-author of over 40 IETF RFCs, numerous internet drafts, and ITU-T contributions. Tom has been granted 14 US Patents.

Tom received his BSCS from The University of New Hampshire, and a M.Sc. from The University of Massachusetts in Lowell, where he has been an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science since 2000 and teaches courses on the topic of data communications. He is also on the technical committee of several prominent networking conferences where he provides technical guidance on their content, as well as frequently presents.

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Gurpreet Singh joined Spirent Communications in 2001 as senior engineer, before becoming technical marketing engineer then product manager of NFV Solutions for the company’s Cloud & IP business unit. Gurpreet is responsible for supporting strategic initiatives and instrumental in business case development for NFV related initiatives, developing partnerships for the NFV Ecosystem, and leading Spirent’s participation and contribution at OPNFV. His detailed knowledge of various unicast routing protocols, multicast protocols, layer 2 switching protocols and Data Center FCoE protocols has been instrumental to Spirent’s active role in ETSI NFV thought leadership for active monitoring and benchmark testing. Gurpreet has been involved in key proof of concept development with major service providers in NFV as well as supporting strategic partnerships with leading Silicon Valley vendors and service providers. He also has extensive experience in training customer and sales personnel for networking protocols, conformance test suites and analysis of the test results.

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For over twenty years Scott Poretsky has been leading design and implementation of service provider solutions. As AVP of Solutions Architecture at Allot Communications, Scott is focused on rapid deployment of network-based security and data services through virtual network functions. Previously, Scott was Director of Carrier Engineering at NextPoint where he led the first industry deployments of Femtocell Gateways. At Avici Systems, Scott was part of the team that delivered the world’s first OC-192 BGP Core Router. Scott began his career at Raytheon Company working with the USAF to successfully deploy the new Milstar ground terminals. Scott has served in many industry leadership roles and is currently Chair for the IEEE ComSoc's Technical Committee for Communications Quality and Reliability (CQR). He previously served as Technical Chair of the IMS Forum. Scott has authored numerous IETF RFCs and holds a patent for networking technology. Scott has an MSEE from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and BSEE from the University of Vermont.

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Diego Lopez received his MS from the University of Granada in 1985, and his PhD degree from the University of Seville in 2001. Diego joined Telefonica I+D in 2011 as a Senior Technology Expert on network infrastructures and services. He is currently in charge of the Technology Exploration activities within the Transversal Projects and Innovation Unit. He joined Telefónica in 2011 after several years in the academic sector. During this period he was appointed as member of the High Level Expert Group on Scientific Data Infrastructures by the European Commission, and as member of Internet2 MACE

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John Strassner is the Chief Technical Officer of the Software R&D Laboratory of the U.S. Division of Huawei and the Orchestration Area Co-Director for MEF Forum.

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Sven van der Meer is a Master Engineer (since November 2011) at the Network Management Labs at Ericsson.

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Azhar Sayeed has more than 17 years of experience in the networking and communications industry that includes design and installation of complex networks involving multiple technologies and vendors. He has worked as a Director of Product Management, in NSSTG, Cisco Systems, Mr. Sayeed was responsible for product management and rollout of IP Routing, Quality of Service (QoS), Broadband and Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) features in Cisco IOS® software. Cisco IOS® software is the network system software that powers the majority of Cisco's hardware platforms. Currently, he is working at Red Hat. Azhar is the co-author of an upcoming book “MPLS and Next-Generation Networks: Foundations for NGN and Enterprise Virtualization” with Monique Morrow.

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Kohei Shiomoto is Senior Research Engineer, Supervisor at NTT Network Technology Laboratories, NTT, Tokyo, Japan. He joined the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), Tokyo, Japan in 1989. He has been engaged in R&D of high-speed networking including ATM, IP, (G)MPLS, and IP+Optical networking in NTT labs. From 1996 to 1997 he was Visiting Scholar at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, USA. From 2006 to 2011, he lead the IP Optical Networking Research Group as Group Leader in NTT Network Service Systems Laboratories. From 2012 to 2016, he lead Communication & Traffic Service Quality Project as Senior Manger at NTT Network Technology Laboratories, NTT, Tokyo, Japan. He received the B.E., M.E., and Ph.D degrees in information and computer sciences from Osaka University, Osaka in 1987 1989, and 1998, respectively. He is a Fellow of IEICE, a Senior Member of IEEE, and a member of ACM.

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Rakesh Kumar is a Distinguished Engineer in the JDI CTO & Architecture team at JuniperNetworks where his current focus is to improve security policy framework using SDN and NFV concepts. He was one of the architects of the Juniper’s cloud services platform, a micro-service based architecture to deploy cloud CPE solution. He has over 20 years of experience in networking industry developing networking platforms including ASIC data path and system software for Ethernet/IP/MPLS stack in routers & switches. He has extensively worked with service provider and large Enterprise around the world for complete network design and deployment. He is currently active in IETF I2NSF (Interface to Network Security Function) WG and driving northbound policy interface.

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Sue Hares is vice president of technology and strategy at ADARA Networks. Hares has more than 30 years of experience in designing and deploying routing protocols and architectures and is active in the Internet Standards (IETF). She currently co-chairs the Inter-Domain Routing Group (IDR), and is a co-author on the BGP specification; used to make the core routing decisions on the Internet, BGP is considered industry-wide to be the most important protocol of the Internet. Sue is responsible for direction of ADARA’s industry-leading software defined networking technology and strategy, participation and contribution to defining SDN standards and collaborating with service providers and technology vendors in the advancement of OpenFlow, Interface to the Routing System (I2RS), Network Functions Virtualization (NVF) and other emerging SDN and virtualization technologies. Hares is an internationally recognized leader in commercialized advanced networking technologies and products.

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David is a Principal Planner, Capacity at Time Warner Cable in Virginia.

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Naoaki Yamanaka graduated from Keio University, Japan where he received B.E., M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in engineering in 1981, 1983 and 1991, respectively. In 1983 he joined Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation's (NTT's) Communication Switching Laboratories, Tokyo Japan, where he was engaged in research and development of a high-speed switching system and high-speed switching technologies for Broadband ISDN services. Since 1994, he has been active in the development of ATM base backbone network and system including Tb/s electrical/optical backbone switching as NTT's Distinguished Technical Member. He moved to Keio University, Department of Information and Computer Science in 2004. He is now researching future optical IP network, and optical MPLS router system. He is currently a Professor in Dept. of Information and Computer Science, Keio University, Japan and representative of Photonic Internet Labs and Committee Chair of iPOP2006 to 2012. He has published over 145 peer-reviewed journal and transaction articles, written 202 international conference papers, and been awarded 339 patents including 23 international patents. Dr. Yamanaka received Best of Conference Awards from the 40th, 44th, and 48th IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference in 1990, 1994 and 1998, TELECOM System Technology Prize from the Telecommunications Advancement Foundation in 1994, IEEE CPMT Transactions Part B: Best Transactions Paper Award in 1996 and IEICE Transaction Paper award in 1999. Dr. Yamanaka is chairman of Keihanna openlab interoperability working group and executive director for ISOCORE for Asia Pacific. Dr. Yamanaka is Technical Editor of IEEE Communication Magazine, Broadband Network Area Editor of IEEE Communication Surveys, Former Editor of IEICE Transaction, former director of Asia Pacific Board at IEEE Communications Society as well as Board member of IEEE CPMT Society. Dr. Yamanaka is an IEEE Fellow and an IEICE Fellow.

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Noriaki Kamiyama received his M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in communications engineering from Osaka University in 1994 and 1996, respectively. From 1996 to 1997, he was with the University of Southern California as a visiting researcher. He joined NTT Multimedia Networks Laboratories in 1997. Since then, he has been engaged in research concerning pricing methods for IP networks, content-distribution systems, optical networks, network topology design, and IP traffic measurement. He is currently in NTT Service Integration Laboratories. He is also with the Osaka University as an invited associate professor from 2013 and an invited professor from 2015. He has been engaged in research concerning network economics, content distribution systems, optical networks, IP traffic measurement, and network design. He received the best paper award at the IFIP/IEEE IM 2013. He is a member of the IEEE and the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE).

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Author bio will be available soon.

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Takehiro Sato received the B.E., M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in engineering from Keio University, Japan, in 2010, 2011 and 2016, respectively. He is currently a research associate in Graduate School of Science and Technology, Keio University, Japan. His research interests include communication protocols and network architectures for the next generation optical network. From 2011 to 2012, he was a research assistant in the Keio University Global COE Program, "High-level Global Cooperation for Leading-edge Platform on Access Spaces" by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan. From 2012 to 2015, he was a research fellow of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. He is a member of the IEEE, and the IEICE.

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Joel Halpern is a Distinguished Engineer with Ericsson, working on Strategy and Technology for Network Analytics and Control. He has a long history of involvement with SDN and MPLS technologies, have=ing helped provide the architecture for early work in this space with Newbridge, and helped create the MPLS working group in the IETF. He is currently active in multiple standards efforts relating to software control of network behavior.

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Adrian Farrel is one of two Routing Area Directors in the Internet Engineering Task Force. He is currently funded in this role by Juniper Networks. He has responsibility for the MPLS, CCAMP, and PCE working groups amongst others. He is the Area Director with responsibility for the MPLS-TP development initiative. Adrian has been heavily involved with the IETF for a number of years and is the author of over 50 RFCs. Adrian also runs a successful consultancy company, Old Dog Consulting, providing advice on implementation, deployment, and standardization of Internet Protocol-based solutions, especially in the arena of routing, MPLS, and GMPLS. He is the author or editor of five books on Internet protocols including The Internet and Its Protocols: A Comparative Approach (Morgan-Kaufmann, 2004), GMPLS: Architecture and Applications (Morgan-Kaufmann, 2005), and MPLS: Next Steps (Morgan Kaufmann, 2008).

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Christopher is the CTO, and a founder of Tigera, Inc, the home of the Canal and Calico open source cloud native networking & network policy enforcement projects, the later of which he originally architected while the director of solutions architecture at Metaswitch. Prior to his time at Metaswitch, Christopher designed and ran a bio-informatics OpenStack cluster, architected solutions around OpenFlow while at BigSwitch Networks, and run architecture at two large carriers (Telstra - AS1221, and Cable & Wireless/iMCI - AS3561) and been the IP CTO for Alcatel in Asia. He's also run networks in Antarctica (hint, fiber bend radius becomes REALLY important at -50C), and been foolish enough to do two stints as a wg co-chair in the IETF. Occasionally you can have the (mis-)fortune of hearing him speak at conferences and the like.

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Tomohiro Otani received the B.E., M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1992, 1994, 2002, and Professional Engineering degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University, USA, in 1998, respectively. In 1994, he joined Submarine Cable Systems Dept. of KDDI Corporation. He is a senior manager of integrated core network control and management group in KDDI R&D Laboratories Inc. He is also a manager of optical network department of KDDI corporation. He also hold a position as a research fellow in NICT JGN II Tsukuba Research Center. His research interests have been intelligent optical networks. He is a member of the IEICE.

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