 is a foundation to help network operators. They started by helping them organize meetups. But since the war in Ukraine, they also provide donated equipment to keep the internet running in the country. So Sonda Stepan is going to talk us through. Take it away, Sonda. Thank you. Microphone seems to be working. So yeah, welcome. So Keep Ukraine Connected is a task force of, why does this always work except when you are? I'm too far away, apparently. So it's a task force of the Global Nog Alliance. We just started doing stuff for the network community. Nogs are operator groups. They usually get together, exchange knowledge, help each other out, things like that. And we were just supporting them, hosting their websites, hosting their email, just making their life a bit easier. But then the war in Ukraine happened. So we are all very close together. The network operator community is quite a close community. So our board member, our chair, actually drove a truck to Ukraine to help them out with humanitarian good. And then he was like, well, if we can do this with humanitarian goods, why don't we help the network people over there? So this is the picture of how it started. Just two trucks full of relief goods in March. But yeah, this was not enough. So how does this actually work? Bringing goods to Ukraine with a truck, the biggest problem is actually the border crossing. You stand there for hours in a queue. So after the first trip, we had a board meeting. And we decided we start a task force, keep Ukraine connected. Now, what do you do? My girlfriend is a designer, so she designed the logo. We registered a website. We're like, oh, let's just ask some people for help. So what do we do? Well, we need to help the people in Ukraine. And we have contacts in the whole community. So I'm sure we can get something together. And this was just a very, you know, just in one weekend, what can we do? But this got bigger and bigger really, really fast. So we made a little application web-based where people from Ukraine could register what they need. We would register all the donations there. And actually, since then, we made multiple deliveries. So my friend already said, like, oh, you start as a network engineer. And three weeks later, it turns out you're a supply chain manager. So we have the database. We're figuring out what everybody needs, what everybody is donating. And this is a lot. So we started out with just a little idea. But then our phone didn't stop ringing. People kept donating stuff. We got from a big US donated pallets and pallets of equipment. We got donations from all around Europe. It's been completely crazy. So yeah, we have our article database because we don't want to just drive some junk to Ukraine. It's like, here is some 100 megabit ethernet hubs. Have fun. Bye. We actually want to do something that helps them. So people from Ukraine can actually put in, these are the things we need. So a donor can see what's in the system. The requester can see what's in the system. And we actually work together with the ministry in Ukraine. And we have a lot of help from a company called DEPS. DEPS is actually a distributor. It's usually their business to sell hardware. But in the war, they actually work together with the Internet Association. And they are now doing all of this work for free. We ship all the donated equipment to them. They will actually clean it up, repackage it, check it, ship it out to all the parties in Ukraine. And we now have people in actual war zones using this equipment. So why are we doing this? Well, some people are like, oh, Ukraine sounds like a third world country. We don't know much about it. But no, the vast majority of people had internet access. They have a lot of people online. I read the other day that the average bandwidth a person has is 60 megabits. They have a very large fiber to the home deployments. So when the war started, internet became even more important to them. So you can see how the trends go. Like the line shows where the invasion started. And suddenly, non-Ukrainian, non-Russian apps are being downloaded a lot. And this is what the working conditions they have in. I tell people, if I were to complain about my working conditions again, let me take a look at this picture. Because on the left here, that's an exploded tank. And sitting there is welding some fibers, using a fiber splicer to fix some backbone links. This is crazy. Yeah, it turns out that fiber connections and tanks and bombs are not really compatible. So this is what they do a lot now. They actually have to find the broken fibers, those tools to measure fiber is broken, and then fix it. But yeah, lots of times, bridges are used for fiber across because a bridge is obviously like if you're crossing water. It's a very convenient way to get your fiber across. But yeah, everything is completely destroyed. And then you're standing there and you actually need military staff protecting you because these pictures are actually taken in Cherkiv and Donetsk. And this is actually still a war zone. They're trying to fix the internet while the war is still going on in that region. So it's actually quite dangerous work as well. Yeah, this is a bit of a server or a data center cell towers being destroyed. So yeah, these are pictures from the first run to Ukraine. We loaded up stuff. And René, the guy in the left picture, he drove a truck from Berlin via Prague to Ljubljana, which is all the way south in Europe, and then stayed there for a day, then drove back to Poland and then crossed into Ukraine to actually deliver all the stuff. We have pallets of servers, fiber supplies, switches. And yeah, like I said, the most difficult bit is actually the customs queue. If you're driving a truck, that means that you stand in that queue. Like I think he arrived in the queue at 11 in the morning and finally made it to the front of the queue at 7 in the evening. Just standing there for eight hours just queuing. But then eight hours later, the white truck was from our side from Depps. So they just put them back to back and loaded everything up. And this was our first delivery. But then what next? We're working on the whole supply chain. We wrote the tools. We're still looking for people to help out with all of this because, yeah, it's still a lot of work. So what are we currently working on? Well, we are still looking for more donors, especially the high-end ISP network here. But we're also looking for partners to work with us, especially in the logistics. Governments are very hard to work with because they work on a completely different level. They talk to people from the massive, the big ISPs, the national telcos, the ones that are like multi-million dollar companies, except Ukraine has a lot of smaller ISPs. I don't know, when I started working on the internet in 1995, every town had its own ISP. Like, there was lots of diversity, lots of smaller companies working together. And everything got bought up and centralized. And now every country has just a handful of ISPs. But Ukraine is still at the point where they have small ISPs that just have 10,000 users or 50,000 users. And that actually made them really, really resilient. But the downside is that nobody has a good view of who needs help. So as you saw in the pictures, they have a lot of broken fiber. So one of the things we're doing is we're using all the donated money to buy splicing equipment, to fix those fibers, to measure where the errors are, stuff like that. Except this is not cheap equipment. If you have a professional fiber splicer, yeah, I say it's about 9,000, 10,000 euros per splicer. I think we still have a request for 40 of them outstanding. So we're still looking for lots of donations there. Of course, my screen goes to sleep. I'm sorry. So yes, we're collecting money, we're collecting equipment, and we actually have multiple trips going to Ukraine. We have volunteers in Poland, volunteers in Germany who just spent their own time, they're not getting paid, driving around in their van, collecting equipment, bringing it to Ukraine. So it's a really impressive effort. And of course, all this volunteering work is not something we get paid for. This is something we do in our spare time. So we have our day jobs, we have our families. And this is, yeah, basically just a hobby. So as usual, hobbies are very expensive. So yeah, who's behind all this? Well, there's Corinne Pritchard who's actually sitting right over there. She does a lot of communication and design for us. Natalie Trenneman works at the RIPE NCC. She's helping a lot. Basically, when she started helping out, she said, I will help you, but I'll kick your butts. Because you're a way to disorganize and you need somebody to tell you what to do. And we were like, yes, please, please tell us what to do. We have no idea what we're doing. So she's the one who's helping us structure everything. Well, there's me. Jan George, a good friend of mine from Slovenia. Now we have René Fichmuller. He works for FlexOptics. And he's the one who drove the first truck to Ukraine. Eric Beis is helping us a lot. And actually, he sponsored him and his business partners. Sponsored two tents here at MCH. And they're actually right next to the music stage where we are collecting hardware for Ukraine or collecting donations. And then the proceeds from that go to Ukraine. So he's helping us a lot, especially at this event. And then the next one, Daniel and Martin. Those are two volunteers who are driving all the vans back and forth with all the equipment. So we also have a lot of help from Ukraine. Because like I said, we don't just want to be one of those charities who just collect junk and dump it over the border. We actually want to know what they need before we send stuff. So we have people from the associations of internet providers. We have people from the association of digital rights, copyright, stuff like that. We have people at DAPS, the distributor. And maybe good to point out that the distributor wasn't chosen by us. They were chosen by the Ukrainian internet providers. So we're trying to do it their way as much as we can. We're not telling them what we're going to do. We actually ask them what they want us to do. So this way we talk to people at the different associations, distributors, and make sure that people in Ukraine actually get what they need. Oh, a whole load of sponsors. Nope. And there, I'm going too fast. And this is actually something we're working on at the moment is to get those splicers. Like I said, they are insanely expensive. We actually got a very good deal. We usually get them about half the usual price. So we're actually talking to the distributors, to the manufacturers, and we get them for about $5,000 for a really professional splicer. So this slide is a bit outdated. We got some more splicers now, especially because last week we got a massive donation. So we just put in some more orders. But yeah, if you look at the right, the splicers that are really good for long-distance trunks, we need about 20 of those. And for the fiber to the home, because there's a lot of smaller ISPs, we're actually looking at about needing 40 of those. So even though we're getting quite some donations, we're not there by a long shot. What else are we doing? Well, like us, we're getting donations from big companies. For the network engineers in the room, we're actually getting Juniper MX 2010s and MX960s donated. So yeah, this is not cheap hardware. That's a couple of decades old. This is actually quite decent hardware for lots of 10 gig and 100 gig links. So yeah, so not all of that is necessary right now. So one of the things, when I said we were looking for partners to work with, is actually finding warehouses where we can store stuff. Most of the people who donate equipment say, oh, if you can't use it, then sell it and use the money to buy something you can use. Except that... Oh, that's cute. Always happens when you're presenting, right? So yeah, so the problem is, the moment we ship it into your crane, we can't get it back anymore. We can't go like, oh, we shipped it to your crane, but they can't actually use it. So at that point, we can't ship it back into Europe and then try to sell it and buy something else for them. So one of the problems we're having at the moment is where do we store the hardware that's donated but not necessary or not yet necessary so we can sell it and get something else. Those are actually quite hard problems because the logistics companies around the world are in a really bad shape at the moment. We actually saw that this week when we were trying to get the banners for the tents next to the music stage, they got delivered to the wrong address, they were actually late and we did like an expedited order for the stickers we got about Keep Ukraine Connected and we got a notification that they would be delivered on Monday. So we actually drove to the UPS Depot in Hovdorop earlier today to get the stickers out of the supply chain because UPS couldn't actually deliver them on time. So yeah, we have stickers at the tent. But you can see how much trouble all the logistics companies are having so being able to actually store some large equipment for a longer time. For example, if you're talking about those big routers, a lot of data centers got destroyed. Like we regularly get videos from one of the ISPs where the data center is just burning. That's not something they're gonna fix in the short term. They're just gonna need some emergency backup, some connections, but maybe half a year from now or a year from now when the war comes down and hopefully Ukraine is in a better shape, then they'll need some of that equipment. So that's some of the logistic problems we're still working on. And like I said, the other one is political customs. When I said, you're standing for eight hours in that queue to even get to the front of the queue to talk to customs. If you're in and we're leaving through Poland, you need a stack of paper just to document what you're exporting, did you have export permission because Network Gear has encryption software. So it's dual use goods, so you have to have export licenses and all that kind of stuff. So of course you need all this paperwork and then you have to export it, declare that you're providing this as humanitarian aid and then you're at the border talking to a customs guy who's like, this isn't humanitarian aid, this is equipment, network equipment. Like, yes, internet is important for people. They need this because it got destroyed. And our first shipment almost got sent back. We actually were looking for warehouses to store the stuff because one guy at the customs was not sure that he would allow this through out of Poland. Luckily, everything worked, but it's sometimes quite hard to convince people that this is also important from a humanitarian point of view. On the Ukrainian side, things are a lot easier. You send the paperwork in advance, they give you QR code, you go to the customs, scan the QR code and you're basically good to go. So it's actually really impressive what the Ukrainians have done there. So yeah, so, oh, I forgot to tell you about that bit. What we also are shipping a lot is power over ethernet switches and Wi-Fi access points to help people in the bomb shelters because people have to shelter from all the violence. And the internet is the only way they can keep connected. Cell towers are being destroyed, mobile networks are being taken over. So for people to have free internet access so they can actually FaceTime their family and tell everybody they're okay, it's really important. So that's also one of the things we're working on and it just shows how, like I said, from a humanitarian perspective, how important it is to help get proper internet access. I'm actually talking way too fast because that was my last slide. So I guess we have some more time for questions. Okay, so first question is, do you prioritize infrastructure to mobile towers? Actually, no. What we see a lot is that the mobile towers and the cell companies are getting a lot of help through the government. There are international warehouses shipping stuff to the Ukrainian government who then distributes it. And you often hear people say like, oh, but the internet in Ukraine is fine. But yeah, then you're talking about the multimillion dollar companies. But because there are so many smaller companies, that is where the major pain is. So what we do is we send it to Debs in Ukraine. They actually keep a list of who is providing service. Like I said, there's a lot of fiber to the home. So they say, okay, we're now first making every ISP at least one fiber splicer to fix the connections to people's homes. So we're more focusing on that than on the really large companies in the cell towers. Can I ask a question? Oh, repeat, yeah, does it answer your question? I think it's super impressive what you guys are doing. Really, really nice. And what I really like is the tool you built to combine questions and available supply. And I was wondering if you would be willing to open source it. It already is. It already is, it's perfect. No, I'm so happy because like I said, they started just as a small project. Like, oh, let's see if we can get some stuff for Ukraine. And I'm really happy that I wrote that tool in the first couple of weeks because after that, I wouldn't have had the energy to do it anymore. No, I understand. But no, it's on github slash nog alliance and the tool is over there. Perfect. We're going to use it for supplies to the front in Kharkiv. And if you need any assistance with the logistics, we've managed to solve many of the headaches you have. So let's drink a beer afterwards. That sounds like an excellent plan. Thanks for the question. Thank you. Do we have any questions from the internet? Yeah. Can I? No questions. Yeah, yeah, go ahead, go ahead. Did the low orbit satellite stuff from Musk help? Ah, that's a very good question. So what we understood is that most of those connections first went to the government and military and those offices. One of the things, and I spoke to, what's her name? Like a reporter, some volunteers as a style organization. And they were actually very careful with this because Russians have missiles that home in on satellite signals. So one of the things they said is if you use those Starlink dishes, put them far away from you. Put them there, walk away, then turn them on, use them for a short time, and then turn them off, wait a few minutes, then go pick them up. I understood that they have very long internet cables. Yeah, they better have. Yeah, I heard from the reporters that they said it actually happened that reporters had satellite phones and were doing live broadcasts from Ukraine and speaking on that phone for half an hour. That's a very dangerous thing to do. Don't do that. Next question is, is there any way we can talk to the Polish government about the border control of your stuff? Can we put any pressure from here to there? We are talking to people from the EU. We have some connection in Poland. It's also difficult because you can talk to the officials, but the guy standing at the border doesn't know anything. So getting that right is a bit tricky, but we're definitely working on getting better paperwork to convince them. And the last question is, using the military supplies for guns and blah, blah, blah, to shift your stuff also there. Is it possible? I don't know. We try to focus on the more humanitarian side of what's needed than on the military side. So we haven't spoken to the military a lot. In the beginning, we asked, oh, we want to help network engineers. What do you need? And we got a list of bulletproof vests and that's not our thing. No, what I mean is... But using them for transport? Use their logistics. Yeah. Thanks for the question. Another question, Graham? Hello? Yeah. So I have a question. I just reminded like it a bit picks up on one of the things that the person in front of me said. You said that you have problems with warehouses. Did you also try with the military? Because, for example, recently noted in Slovenia, military does have a lot of warehouses. They also make it available to certain organizations. Mostly, I personally, it's for scouts. I don't know if the military wants to meddle these things in an official way, but have you tried that and yeah. We haven't, we should. Thank you. Cool. Thanks for the question. Yeah, so my question would be like, what do the Russians do after they occupy an area? Do they try to disrupt the networks? Do they try to censor? Do they try to route the traffic in another way? So usually when the Russians occupy a territory, the mobile signals and internet connections are fed back to Russia. So people in those areas get Russian TV, they get Russian cell servers, they get Russian filtered internet. What we saw, the region around Kiev, where the Russians actually went away, is that they destroy everything that they leave behind. So they, in data centers, they just pull stuff out of the racks and smash it on the floor in the offices. They, and this was before Bitcoin went down so far, but yeah, they basically opened all the office PCs and pulled out all the video cards and SSDs before leaving. So, yeah, there's a, they basically, when they are somewhere and they stay, they make sure it's all Russian controlled. The moment they are driven away again or they pull back, they destroy everything before they leave. So that's what we can see from the strategy. Thanks for the question. And just another check. Any more questions from the internet? Is that, I can't hear it. Is that thumbs down or thumbs up? These lights are very bright. They're very bright. No, okay. Well, I have a question actually. So you have a tent. First, I'm sorry because I said, oh, we'll take maximum 10 minutes of questions and then I was finished too early. So sorry for messing up my schedule. No, no, it's fine. It was an awesome talk, so thank you. But one question I have. You have a tent here, don't you? Yes, so. Tell us about the tent. So yeah, there's the bring and donate tent next to the music stage. You can bring stuff there, like books and stuff to that other people then can use here at the MCH and then donate money for Ukraine. If you have any equipment that's actually usable for people in Ukraine, we're collecting that as well. Although I doubt you're walking around with a massive router, but hey, who knows? It's MCH. It's MCH. But yeah, so we will be in the tent. People to talk to, we actually are putting up some of the pictures to show what's happening in Ukraine. And even if you can't do anything now, please come by, we have stickers, we have postcards and stuff like that. So even if we can't do anything right now, maybe you can help out when you get home. Brilliant. Thanks, Richard. Let's thank our speaker for an amazing talk. Thank you.