M1   Topics in System Administration
Trent Hein, XOR Network Engineering; Evi Nemeth, University of Colorado, Boulder

Who should attend: System and network administrators who want to learn about real-life solutions to everyday problems.

Overwhelmed by the rapid change in the system administration field? Need to learn some quickly? This tutorial is a potpourri of learning about hot topics that will make you more effective in your role as a system administrator.

Topics include:

Squid cache - The squid Internet object cache is a very high-performance proxy caching system for web clients. When deployed correctly, it can drastically improve the performance of your network and reduce the need to purchase external bandwidth. We'll talk about how to implement this hierarchical tool at your site in a practical manner.

Security packet filtering primer - All too often these days, the word "firewall" is used in a sentence. But what does it really mean, and how do you set up a packet filter list to implement a basic one? We'll teach you the do's and don'ts of creating a robust packet filter, and talk specifically about how to apply one in an environment using Cisco routers.

Bind 8.x - BIND, also known as named or the 'DNS server', has been changing to keep up with the times. Have you? We'll cover the recent changes that have been made in BIND, as well as how to set the newest version up in your network.

6bone - Ready or not, here it comes. It's time to start testing applications at your site that use the "next generation" IP protocol, IPv6. Learn how you can set up a test bed and connect to the "6bone" to begin learning about IPv6 in a hands-on manner before it's too late.

WAN Performance - Practically every site these days has a WAN - whether it be for Internet or Intranet. How do you measure the performance you're getting from your WAN? We'll introduce you to the basics of practical WAN performance monitoring.  

Evi Nemeth  (M1, T1)  a faculty member in computer science at the University of Colorado, and has managed UNIX systems for the past 20 years, both from the front lines and from the ivory tower. She is co-author of the UNIX System Administration Handbook.