[Music]
so global knock alliance gna
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
um so
sander stefan is going to talk us
through
take it away son
thank you
microphone seems to be working
so um yeah welcome um so keep ukraine
connected uh is a task force of
why does this always work except when
you're
[Music]
i'm too far away apparently
so it's a task force of the global knock
alliance um
we just started uh doing stuff for the
network community um
nogs are operator groups they get
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
um
but then
the war in ukraine happened
so
we are all like
very close together the the network
operator community is quite a close
community
so our
board member our chair
actually wrote drove a truck to ukraine
um
to help them out with humanitarian good
and then he was like well if we can do
this for with humanitarian goods
why don't we help the network people
over there
so
this is the picture of
of how it started
just two trucks full of relief goods in
the in march
but yeah this was not enough
so
um
[Music]
how
does this actually
work
bringing a goods to uh
to ukraine um
with a truck
the biggest problem is actually the
border crossing
um
you still you stand there for hours in a
queue
so
after the first trip we had a board
meeting
and we decided
we started task force keep ukraine
connected
now you know what do you do um 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 what do we do well we we need to
help the 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 an uh what in one weekend what can
we do
um
but this got bigger and bigger really
really fast so
we made a little
application web base where people from
ukraine could register what they need
we would register all the donations
uh there
um and actually since then we
we made multiple uh deliveries so
my friend alright said like oh you start
you start as a network engineer and
three weeks later it turns out you're a
supply chain manager
um
yeah so we uh we have the database we're
figuring out what everybody needs what
everybody
is is donating
and this is a lot so
we started out with a little uh
you know just a little idea
um but then our phone didn't stop
ringing people kept donating stuff we
got from a big us it 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 um
because we don't want to
just drive some junk to ukraine it's
like here is some hundred megabit uh
ethernet hubs have fun bye
you know we actually want to do
something that that helps them so people
can put from uk can actually put in
these are the things we need
so
a donor can
can 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 like it's
usually their business to to sell
hardware but in the war they uh they
actually work together with the internet
association
and they uh
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 the in ukraine
and we now have people uh like in actual
war zones using this equipment
so why are we doing this
well
ukraine is
some people are like oh ukraine sounds
like a third world country we don't know
much about it
um
but no like the the vast majority of
people had internet access
um
they uh
they have a lot of uh
people on online i i read the other day
that like the average bandwidth a person
has a 60 megabits
they have a very large fiber to the home
deployments
so yeah so when the war started internet
became even more important to them
so
you can see how uh uh
how did how the trends uh uh uh go like
the the line go
shows where the where the invasion
started and suddenly um
non-ukrainian non-russian apps are being
downloaded a lot
and this is what they uh uh
the the working conditions they have in
like i tell people like if i ever
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 the
sitting there is uh
welding some fibers using a fiber
splicer to to fix some some backbone
links
this is this is crazy
um
yeah it turns out that fiber connections
and tanks and bombs are not really
compatible
so this is what they uh what they do a
lot now they
they they actually have to find the
fight the broken fibers um use tools to
measure fiber is broken
um
and then fix it
but yeah it's
a lot of times bridges are used for a
fiber across because
a bridge is
obviously like if you're especially if
you're using 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
uh turkey and uh 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 uh
this is a a bit of a of a server rack or
a data center
cell towers being destroyed
so yeah so this was the these are
pictures from the the first run to uh uh
to ukraine
um we loaded up stuff uh and uh renee
the guy in the left picture
he uh drove a truck from berlin via
prague to ljubljana which is like all
the way south uh
in europe and then uh stayed there for a
day then drove back to poland uh and
then crossed into ukraine to actually
deliver all the stuff we have pallets of
of servers fiber splicers switches
um
and yeah but like i said the most
difficult bit is actually the custom
skew
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 uh made it to
the front of the queue at seven in the
evening you know just standing there for
eight hours just queuing
but then eight hours later
the white truck was
from our side
from uh from depths
so they just put them back to back and
loaded everything up
and
this was
our first deliver
but then
what next our working on the whole
supply chain um we wrote
the tools we're still looking for people
to help out with all of this
um because yeah it's still a lot of work
so
what are we currently working on
well
we are still looking for for more donors
especially
the high-end isp network gear
but we're also looking for uh
for partners to uh to work with us
especially in the
in in the logistics
um
governments are very hard to work with
because
they work on a completely different
level they
talk to
people uh uh
from the massive the big isps you know
the uh the national telcos
um the ones that uh uh
that are
like multi multi-million dollar
companies
um
except ukraine has a lot of smaller
isps
um i don't know uh if you're like when i
started working on the internet in 95
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
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
um but the downside is is that
nobody has a good view of who needs help
so as you as you saw in the
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
to measure where the errors are stuff
like that
except this is not cheap equipment
if you have a professional fiber splicer
yeah i i say it's about nine ten
thousand euros per splicer
um we i think we still have like a
request for 40 of them outstanding so
um we're still looking for a lot lots of
donations there
um
of course my screen goes to sleep i'm
sorry
um
so yes
we're collecting money we're collecting
equipment and we actually have multiple
uh trips uh going to uh to ukraine we
have volunteers in poland volunteers in
germany
who just spend their own time they're
not getting paid
driving around in their van collecting
equipment bringing it to ukraine so it's
it's a really impressive
effort
and of course all this all this
volunteering work
um
is
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
um and this is yeah
basically just a hobby
so
and as as usual hobbies are very
expensive
so yeah who's who's who's behind the uh
all this
well
um there's current pre-chart is actually
sitting right over there
she does a lot of communication and
design for us natalie trenham and
works at ripe ncc she's
uh she's helping a lot basically when
she when she started helping out she
said i will help you but i'll kick your
butt
because you are way too disorganized 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 she's the one who's uh who's
helping us structure everything
um well it's a there's me
uh jan george a
good friend of mine from slovenia
then we have
rene fishmueller
he works for flex optics and he he's the
one who drove the first truck to to
ukraine
eric bise is helping us a lot
and actually he sponsored uh uh him and
his business uh partners sponsored two
tents here at uh mch and they're
actually right next to the music stage
where we are uh
collecting uh 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 danielle and
martin those are two volunteers who
are driving all the fans back and forth
with all
with all the equipment
so we also have a lot of help from
ukraine like 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 um
digital rights copyright stuff like that
um we have people at deps the
distributor
and maybe good to point out that
distributor wasn't chosen by us
they were chosen by the ukrainian
internet providers
so we're trying to do it
as
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
we talk to people at the different
associations distributors um
and make sure that people in ukraine
actually get what they
need 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
um we actually got a very good deal we
usually uh
get them about half the usual price so
we're actually talking to the
distributors to the manufacturers
and we get them
for
about 5000 for a really professional
splicer
so
this this slide is a bit outdated we got
a we got some more splices now
especially because last week we got a
massive donation so we we just put in
some some more uh
orders
um
but yeah the uh if you if you look at
the right the um
the
the splices that are really good for
like long distance trunks uh we need
about 20 of those
and for the 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
um what else are we uh doing well
like us we're getting donations from big
companies
um 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 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
um 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
[Laughter]
always happens when you're presenting
right
um
so yeah so um the problem is the moment
we ship it uh into ukraine
um we can't get it back anymore we can't
go like oh we shipped it to ukraine 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 and get some get
something else
um those are actually quite hard
problems because
um
the logistics companies around the world
are in a really bad shape at the moment
um
we actually
saw that this week when we were trying
to get the banners for the uh for the
tents next to the music stage
um they got delivered to the wrong
address they uh uh they were actually
late
and um we did a uh
like a expedited order for the stickers
we got
about to keep ukraine connected
and we got a notification that they
would be delivered on monday
so
we actually drove to the ups depot in
hovdov 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 10.
yeah but you can you can see how how
much trouble all the logistics companies
are having so um being able to actually
uh store some some large equipment for a
longer time
um
for example those if you're talking
about those big routers um
a lot of data centers got destroyed like
we uh
we regularly get videos from one of the
isps where the data center is just
burning
um
that's not something they're going to
fix in the short term then short term
they're just going to need some
some emergency backups 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 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 it for eight
hours in that queue to even get to the
front of the queue to uh uh to talk to
customs
um if you're in uh and we're leaving
through poland you need a stack of paper
just
to document what you're exporting that
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
um
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 is like this isn't humanitarian aid
this is equipment network equipment
like yes internet is important for
people so like we they need it because
of that detroit
and our first shipment almost got sent
back we actually were looking for
warehouses to store the stuff
because uh
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 a qr code you go to the
custom scan the qr code and you're
basically good to go
so it's actually really impressive what
the ukrainians have uh have done there
um so yeah so um
oh i forgot to tell you about that a bit
um
what we also are shipping a lot is
power over ethernet switches and wi-fi
access points
um to help people in the bomb shelters
because
people have to shelter from all the all
the violence
um and the internet is the only way they
can keep
connected cell towers are being
destroyed mobile networks are being
taken over
so um
for people to have free internet access
so they can actually facetime their
family and tell everybody they're okay
is is really important so that's also
one of the uh things we're working on
and it just shows how from you like i
said from humanitarian perspective how
important
it is to to help to help people 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 in uh infrastructure to
mobile towers
um actually no
um what we see a lot is that the mobile
towers and the cell companies are
getting a lot of help through the
government um there is there are
international warehouses shipping stuff
to the ukrainian government who then
distributes it
and you often hear people say like oh
but you know the internet in ukraine is
fine
but yeah then you're talking about the
multi-million dollar companies
um but because there are so many smaller
companies um
that is uh where the 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 um
they say okay you know we're we're now
first making
every isp
at least
one fiber splicer to fix the 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 can i ask a question
oh repeat yeah does it answer your
question
um i think it's super impressive what
you guys are doing
um
really really nice um and what i really
like is the tool you built
to combine questions and available
supply
and i was wondering and if you would be
willing to open-source it it already is
it already is perfect
no it's 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 that but no it's on the
uh it's on github slash knock alliance
and the the tool is over there perfect
we're going to use it for supplies to
the front in khakis
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 um do
we have any questions from the uh from
the internet
yeah
canary no questions yeah yeah go ahead
go ahead
did the low orbit satellite stuff from
musk help
that's a
that's a very good question um so
what we understood is that most of the
of those connections first went to the
the government and military and uh
those offices
um
one of the things uh and i spoke to um
what's her name like a
reporter some frontiers as a style
organization and they were actually very
careful uh with this
because russians have uh uh missiles
that that home in on satellite signals
so one of the things they said is if you
use those uh 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 uh
ethernet cables
yeah
they better have yeah i uh i heard from
the the reporters that they said it
actually happened that um reporters had
uh satellite phones and were
doing like 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
uh the the
border control of your stuff
can we
put any pressure
from here
we are talking to people from the from
the eu we have some connections in
poland it's also difficult uh because
you can talk to the officials
but the guy standing at the border
doesn't know anything
so getting that right is is is a bit
tricky but uh we're definitely working
on getting better paperwork to convince
them
and the last question is
using the military supplies for for guns
and blah blah blah to to shift your
stuff also there
we haven't is that possible
i i don't know we uh
we tried 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 uh
we asked like oh we want to help network
engineers what do you need and we've got
a list of like bulletproof vests and
that that's not our thing you know what
i mean but using them for transport use
their logistics yeah
thanks for the question another question
for him
hello yeah so i have a question i just
reminded like it a bit picks up on one
the um the things that the person in
front of me said
um you said that you have problems with
warehouses uh did you also try with the
military because for example this are
noted in slovenia military
does have a lot of warehouses
they also um 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 a in an official way
but have you tried that and
yeah
we haven't we should thank you
cool
thanks for the question
uh 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 its uh the traffic in
another way
so the uh usually when the russians
occupy a territory the uh the mobile
signals the internet connections are fed
back to russia
so people in those areas get russian tv
they get russian self-service they get
russian filtered internet
um
what we saw uh the region uh around uh
kiev where the the russians actually
went away
um
is that they destroy everything in uh
that they leave behind so they in in
data centers they just pull stuff out of
the racks and smash it on the floor
um in the offices they uh and this was
before bitcoin went down so far but
um
yeah they basically opened all the
office pcs and pulled out all the video
cards and ssds before leaving
so
um yeah there's a uh
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 uh pull back
they destroy everything before they
leave
so that's that's what we can see from
the strategy
thanks for the question and just another
check any more uh questions from the
internet
uh is that i can't hear 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 you have a
10.
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 the schedule no that's
fine it's fine it was a um awesome talk
sir thank you um but you uh one question
i have you have a a tent here don't you
yes yes so tell us about the tent
so yeah there's uh the the bring and
donate then next to the the music stage
um you can bring stuff there like
books and stuff to that other people
then can uh can use here at the
mch
and then donate money for for ukraine
um
if you have any uh
equipment that's actually usable for
people in ukraine uh we're collecting
that as well although i doubt you're
walking around with a massive router but
hey who knows it's mch
um
but yeah so um we will be in the in the
ten there will be people to talk to we
actually are putting some uh putting up
some of the pictures to to show what's
happening in uh
in ukraine
um and even if you can't do anything now
uh please come by we have uh we have
stickers we have postcards and stuff
like that so even if we can't do
anything right now um maybe you can help
out when you get home brilliant thanks
for this let's thank our speaker for an
amazing talk
[Music]
[Applause]
you