Amir Zmora is CEO & Co-founder of flexiWAN, the world’s first Open Source SD-WAN & SASE.  Before starting flexiWAN, Amir was CEO & Co-founder of SwitchRTC, a Real-time, interactive WebRTC based video CDN and B2B/B2C collaboration solution acquired by YouNow. Among his previous positions, Amir was VP Products & Marketing for the Technology Business Unit of RADVISION, an Avaya company.

Zhenbin Li is in charge of the research and standard promotion work of IP protocols. Before that he had been the Chief IP/MPLS Service Architect and the Chief Architect of SDN controller to be responsible for the service and architecture design of IP software platform and SDN controller.  Zhenbin Li and his team are taking an active part in the IP/MPLS/SDN standardization work in IETF and promote the innovation of SR, BGP/VPN, PCE, SBI/NBI, Telemetry, etc.

Wen Lin is a Distinguished Engineer at Juniper Networks. She has decades of experience in routing protocols and network design. She has co-authored and contributed to many IETF RFCs and internet drafts in the EVPN area.

He is responsible for SRv6, CUPS, CAN related standards, author of books "SRv6 Network Programming: Ushering in an new era of IP" and "Reconstructing the Network: SDN Architecture and Implementation".

Krzysztof Grzegorz Szarkowicz is a Solution Architect at Juniper Networks, concentrating on mobile transport solutions, and has been working with the networking industry 20+ years,delivering projects at many operators world-wide.  Before joining Juniper Networks in 2007, he worked with Hewlett Packard Labs, Telia Research, Ericsson, and Cisco. During that time he gained valuable hands-on experience at various aspects of networking, culminating in gaining CCIE-SP and JNCIE-SP certifications.   He is co-author of the O’Reilly book “MPLS in the SDN Era", by Antonio Sánchez-Monge and Krzysztof Grzegorz Szarkowicz, as well as “Day One: Configuring Segment Routing with Junos” by Julian Lucek and Krzysztof Grzegorz Szarkowicz. At present, he is active contributing member of O-RAN WG9 (Open X-haul Transport) co-authoring WG9's architectural documents.

Clarence Filsfils, a Cisco Systems Fellow, has a 20-year expertise leading innovation, productization, marketing and deployment for Cisco Systems. Trusted and respected by key decision makers across major WEB/OTT, SP’s and large Enterprises, Clarence enjoys working with these operators to listen to their needs and requirements, and then get things done from product design to deployment.  He invented the Segment Routing Technology (over 40 patents) and is leading its productization, marketing and deployment at record execution speed. For this contribution, he received the Pioneer Award - Cisco's most prestigious award honoring innovative engineering. The award celebrates engineering contribution that brings growth in new markets, redefines current markets, and provides game-changing improvements to engineering productivity. Previously, Clarence invented and led the Fast Routing Convergence Technology (over 30 patents) and was the lead designer for Cisco System’s QoS (20 patents) and large-scale IP/MPLS deployments.   Clarence is a regular speaker at leading industry conferences. He holds over 130 patents and is a prolific writer, either in academic circle (Sigcomm 2015), or standard (8 RFC’s, 20 drafts on standard’s track) or books. Clarence holds a Masters in Management from Solvay Business School and a Masters of Engineering in Computer Science from the University of Liege.

Bart Janssens is a Senior Specialist Packet Network Architect for Colt Technology Services. During his 22 years career at Colt Bart has always been part of engineering defining and building various network generations following closely the latest industry innovations including driving early proof of concepts.   Bart is also working on various next generation performance, fault and orchestration OSS platforms supporting Colt’s Digital Infrastructure rapid evolutions.

Daniel is a Technical Director at Bell Canada involved in research and development of disruptive technologies transforming the Telco space and Bell Canada’s network and services.  He is currently working on the edge cloud strategy and cloud-native transformation leveraging optimized CP/UP separation and advances in network and hardware programming. He is involved in various open source community projects such as FD.io, Network Service Mesh and P4.org. He is also a participating member at the IETF and BBF, co-authoring and collaborating on various drafts for SPRING based service-programming and SFC.

Dan Voyer leverages 25 years in the telecommunication industry. He is currently technical director and lead architect for networking and data center at Bell Canada.

Amit Dhamija currently working as a Principal architect in the Strategy, Architecture, and Engineering team at Rakuten Mobile Inc. In his current role, Amit is responsible for defining the strategy for leading-edge, business-critical solutions for major, enterprise-wide solutions across Rakuten.   Before joining Rakuten, Amit worked as Solutions Architect at Cisco. He has been in the telecommunications/networking industry for 20 years. He also co-authored many IETF drafts in the SPRING and TEAS working groups.

Gyan Mishra is Lead Core & DC architect, R&D on NG Core & DC innovations & technological advancements for Verizon.   IT Technologist & Innovations specialist with over three decades of experience in Business Development in Network Engineering & Design with a focus on R&D innovations in protocol design & solutions patents for Global Enterprise & Service Provider networks that will transform the marketplace.   Over three decades of business development, business analysis, trending, forecasting of Next Generation emerging technologies and industry direction, planning, procurement, budgeting, accounting and financial strategies, ROI, Business Modeling & EBITA.   Leader and innovator in emerging network engineering technologies such as Segment Routing, SR-MPLS, SRv6 and 5G development and integration of IETF Network Slicing architecture into the mobile core using Segment Routing and Flex Algo to provide 3GPP UPF Cloud RAN network slicing capabilities.   Active Member of the 52 IETF Working Groups, 70 Active drafts, 3 patent filed, 30 patents in progress, 74 IETF presentations given to a worldwide audience of developers.

Hooman Bidgoli is a Product Line Manager in Nokia’s IP Networks. Hooman has over 23 years of experience in IP/MPLS protocols and network design.  In addition he has over 10 years of network security experience including transport encryption. He is an active member of IETF.

Mingqing Huang is the vice chief technical expert of Internet security at Huawei Datacom. He has 25+ years experience in Datacom R&D and Network Solution design.  He was the initial team member of Huawei core router development team, software manager, R&D representative, system architect. Before leading Internet Security research in 2019, he was the director of solution design department.

Alok Pandey is an accomplished Product Manager with over 8 years of experience in Cloud/Infrastructure security & Open Network Management solutions.  During his stint as a product manager with Juniper, Cisco & Intel, he has envisioned several products solving real-world problems and ultimately gaining industry-wide acceptance.

Rakesh Kandula is a Technical Marketing Engineer in Cisco’s Mass Scale Infrastructure Group (MIG), where he handles security for products primarily deployed in service provider networks.  Rakesh received his Master’s Degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT Delhi). He has been with Cisco for 15+ years in various roles. His current focus areas are Trustworthy Systems, Platform Security Chips, Secure Boot, DDoS Solutions and other security features relevant to routing platforms.  Outside his work, Rakesh is an avid runner who loves running marathons and trail ultras.

Eyal Aloni is the Head of Line of Business at RAD. In this position he is responsible for all worldwide business development and RAD’s products and solutions. He has been serving in this role since 2017 and prior to that, Eyal headed the RADcloud line of business for two years.   Before his time at RAD, Eyal spent two years heading the Service Provider vertical market at ECI, and prior to that he was the head of business development and product management for several telecom companies.   Eyal holds a BSc. in Electronics and an MBA, both from Tel Aviv University. He has more than twenty years of experience.

Sherif Awad is currently the Chief Solution/Product Architect at Nuage Networks for the Service Edge solution. He has over 20 years of experience in SDN, SD-WAN, cloud, security, automation/orchestration, and IP/MPLS architecture, design, development, deployment, training, and consultancy.   Sherif has played a key role in leading successful customer POCs, trials and production deployments/service launches in both the service provider and enterprise segments globally and is a regular speaker at industry events. He holds a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science Honors CO-OP) degree from the University of Ottawa and has received certifications in Service Routing Architect and Virtuoso (SDN/SD-WAN Architect), Nokia’s highest-level certification.

Amir Zmora is CEO & Co-founder of flexiWAN, the world’s first Open Source SD-WAN & SASE.  Before starting flexiWAN, Amir was CEO & Co-founder of SwitchRTC, a Real-time, interactive WebRTC based video CDN and B2B/B2C collaboration solution acquired by YouNow. Among his previous positions, Amir was VP Products & Marketing for the Technology Business Unit of RADVISION, an Avaya company.

Telecommunications Engineer with twenty years of experience in service provider networking architecture, design and implementation in the areas of SDN/NFV, IP/MPLS (Internet, MPLS VPN & Data Center), Carrier Ethernet and Optical Transport.  Since 2012, actively working on SDN and NFV representing Colt at both ONF (Open Networking Foundation) and ETSI ISG NFV (Network Functions Virtualisation), as well as part of Colt's On Demand team developing the SDN and NFV strategy for Colt.

A technocrat with 15 years of experience in Network Architecture, Design and Administration. Having secured CCIE in Enterprise Infrastructure, my key expertise is into the SP Technologies and Transport.  I have previously worked with Juniper, Cisco, Vodafone, IBM, HCL serving different roles in the networking industry.

Eli is a seasoned tech executive and entrepreneur. Prior to founding InsidePacket, he led operations, product, strategy, and innovation at various global organizations.   He gained his experience working with big-tech market leaders, hyperscaler companies, and small startups.   Having built cloud infrastructure technologies at scale, and understanding the business of cloud service offerings, Eli followed his inspiration to help infrastructure and service providers reach "the new game" and founded InsidePacket.

Dave Ward is CEO of PacketFabric. Prior to joining PacketFabric, he was the Chief Technology Officer of Engineering, Chief Architect, and SVP at Cisco’s Networking and Security Business where he drove innovation for the company’s entire platform, product and solution portfolio.   He led Cisco’s core innovation programs, unifying and advancing strategic co-innovation partnerships and programs with internal and external customers, partners, developers, academia, standards and open-source groups.   He also led the portfolio trajectory by creating new offerings and technologies inside and outside Cisco’s traditional product portfolio. His engineering teams built numerous hardware and software products as well as industry solutions, including automation, orchestration, workflow engineering, 5G cloud networking, and IoT-based solutions for smart cities, retail, transportation, healthcare, media and entertainment. He also led architectural governance, technology strategy and development, patent strategy and university research for the company.   During his tenure at Cisco, he held the prestigious title of Cisco Fellow. He has served on the Boards of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions, Advanced Imaging Society, Linux Foundation, Linux Foundation Networking, ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector, Governmental Advisory boards and Open Networking Foundation. He is a tireless advocate for the environment and conservation. He has been in several documentaries.

Kashif Islam is a Principal Telecommunication Architect in Red Hat’s consulting organization and help service providers transform their existing mobile infrastructure into next-generation cloud-native 5G networks   Kashif is a 20+ year veteran in the IT industry and has architected several complex, large-scale networks for some of the biggest wireline and mobile service providers across the world. He is also an O-RAN alliance contributor and co-authored O-RAN xHaul Packet Switched Architectures and Solutions specification. Kashif has also co-authored a book titled "A Network Architect's Guide to 5G”, which is the first book to cover mobile core, RAN, and transport technology fundamentals and network design details.   Kashif is Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) and a double CCIE (#14300) in Data Centers and Routing/Switching Technologies. He holds a Bachelor degree from Sir Syed University (Pakistan), as well as a Master of Engineering in Internetworking degree from Dalhousie University, Canada.

Syed F. Hassan is a Principal Telecommunications Architect at Red Hat, providing consultancy services to 5G service providers globally. In his 20+ year of experience, he has provided guidance, strategy, and planning support to various Internet, Cloud, and Mobile service providers in their adoption of innovative networking technologies and transformation of their networks to new architectures.   Syed has co-authored multiple books on leading technologies. He is the co-author of the first book on NFV and SDN, as well as the first book for 5G Network Architects ("A Network Architect's Guide to 5G"). He has been a regular speaker in public forums and conferences. Syed is a double CCIE in Service Provider and Data Center technologies (#21617), Google Certified Professional Cloud Networking Engineer, Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), and a Red Hat Certified Specialist in Containers, Kubernetes and OpenShift Administration. He holds a bachelor's degree in engineering from NED University (Pakistan) and a master's degree in engineering from the University of Florida.

Prayson has worked at Siecor FiberLAN, Bell Northern Research (BNR) and Larscom. He then became a co-founder at Overture Networks, which was acquired by ADVA, which is now part of Adtran.   Prayson is a named inventor on nine patents. He has degrees from Duke University and North Carolina State University.

Carsten Rossenhövel is Managing Director and Co-Founder of EANTC AG (European Advanced Networking Test Center). Based in Berlin, Germany, EANTC is an independent test lab for telecommunication technologies offering vendor-neutral network testing and consultancy services for vendors, service providers, and enterprises.   In this role, Carsten has over 20 years of experience in telecommunication networks testing and is responsible for EANTC's business development. His technical areas of expertise include validation of 5G, Open RAN, and transport technologies.

Paul Meyers is Senior Product Manager within Nokia's (and previously Alcatel and Alcatel-Lucent's) IP Division since 2005, focussing the last years on Mobile Anyhaul and 5G.   Before joining this team, he was active within Alcatel for several years (starting from 1994) as Supply Chain project engineer looking into advanced planning systems and reverse logistics and from 2000 on as Marketing Manager and Business Consultant for data products (ATM & IP).  Paul holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Louvain (KUL) and a Masters degree in Economics.

He is an expert on Deterministic Network with Huawei's Data Communication in China. He is also responsible for mobile backhaul networking innovation and standards work and involved in strategic standards development.   He has over 10 years of experience on optical network and protocol design, starting from IEEE 802.3 Ethernet 100GE, FlexE, MTN etc. Currently he focuses on mobile backhaul network innovation and standardization.  He received his Ph.D degree of Optical communication from Politecnico Di Torino.

Suresh Leroy is the EMEA Regional Product Line Manager for BNG and the residential services within Nokia’s IP and Optical Networks Division. He joined Alcatel in 1998 as mobile research engineer and has now almost 20 years of experience in telecommunications.   He joined Nokia IP division in 2017. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and Master degree in software engineering at Brussels university. Suresh is based in Antwerp, Belgium.

Shahid Ajmeri is a senior product manager at Cisco with responsibility for leading its 5G transport and telco cloud architecture strategy. He has more than 20 years of experience in the service provider industry, focusing on various technologies ranging from 3G/4G to 5G mobile networks, Edge Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, service provider security, time synchronization, and end-to-end network design.   Shahid has been instrumental in driving network transformation projects and architecting next-generation networks for customers across the globe. He drives Cisco’s next generation technology vision to standardize solutions in standards organizations like ORAN Alliance, ITU-T, and IEEE. He currently works across disciplines, bringing together engineering, standards development organizations, and customers to develop and translate product requirements from industry and standard-setting bodies to the market.  Shahid is a co-author of the book, ”Synchronizing 5G Mobile Networks," and is a frequent speaker at high-profile industry events.

Mr. Liu Aihua, graduated from Xi’an Jiaotong University with a Master Degree, is currently the Senior System Architect of Wired Products in ZTE Corporation. He has long been engaged in wired network architecture, key technology research and standardization work.  He focuses on the research on wired network architecture evolution, mobile backhaul networks, and 5G bearer technologies.

Robert Friskney is part of Ciena’s global solution architecture team, working on 4G/5G mobile, with a particular focus on network slicing.   Robert joined Ciena via the Nortel MEN acquisition in 2009. From graduation, he started working in fixed line copper access technologies, SIP VoIP and MPLS before changing to photonic networking for his academic research work. Going back into IP/Ethernet to co-invent PBB-TE (802.1Qay), he then drove the network management solution for this technology and eventually all IP/Ethernet. He shifted to a broader architecture role shaping Ciena’s IP/Optical convergence before handing that off to production, and moved to his current pursuit of mobile networking.   Robert holds twenty four patents, an MA in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, UK and an MSc in Telecommunications and EngD in Electronic Engineering, both from the University of London, UK.