The second edition of the APIE Advanced Camp was held from May 19 to 23, 2025, at SOI Asia Haneda campus, located just next to the Haneda Airport, in Tokyo, Japan. Designed as the next step in the APIE learning journey after the regular camp, this five-day program brought together 24 students from SOI Asia partner universities across Bangladesh, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines, and Vietnam. The Advanced Camp builds on prior APIE Core Course, e-Workshop and APIE (basic) Camp experiences, emphasizing applied knowledge through collaborative group activities and real-world scenarios.
Divided into teams, participants worked to deepen their understanding of Internet infrastructure and computer architecture, and gained the skills and knowledge to design, deploy, and operate scalable, highly available, and secure services. They tackled infrastructure design challenges and sharpened their skills with guidance from mentors representing AITAC, APNIC, Keio University, and the University of Tokyo.
A Week of Learning and Collaboration
Each day of the camp was dedicated to a core area of infrastructure and service development:
- DAY 1: Computer Architecture—Play with Docker—
- DAY 2: Service Fundamentals – Database
- DAY 3: Run and Monitor Your Service
- DAY 4: Design Review and Resilient Infrastructure
- DAY 5: Site Visit and Network Security Fundamentals
DAY 1: Virtualization and Containers
The camp opened with an orientation by the APIE staff and greetings from APIE lead Dr. Noriatsu Kudo and Prof. Keiko Okawa. It was followed by a hands-on introduction to computer architecture and virtualization delivered by Prof. Yuji Sekiya (AITAC) and the APIE NOC team.
Participants set up their own hyper-visor and exercise virtual machines using Proxmox on the real the enterprise level servers assigned by Yoshito ‘hayabusa’ Kurazumi and the APIE NOC team in the morning session. In the afternoon session, they configure container environment to learn the basic operation of Docker based containers.
Day 2: Web and Database Integration
On Day 2, Dr. Seiichi Yamamoto (AITAC) shared about the basic operation of relational databases using MYSQL. Then, students moved on to building a minimum working web service using Flask and MySQL.
After the database session, students discussed about the service eco system in a group with the support of Dr. Shun Arima (Keio) to develop their final group project.
Day 3: Monitoring and Visualization
Guided by Prof. Yuji Sekiya and Dr. Kunio Akashi, participants learned to implement basic monitoring using technologies such as Zabbix, syslog, and SNMP. They visualized logs and system metrics and refined their prototype services, gaining a better understanding of what to monitor and why it matters. In the end of the day, they set up alarting configuration to their servers to notify errors to Slack.
Day 4: Scaling and High Availability
The morning was dedicated to a review session where each team presented the current status of their design and got valuable feedback from lecturers and mentors.
The afternoon was focused on scalability, availability, and monitoring in cloud environments, with new inputs by Dr. Seiichi Yamamoto (AITAC). Students explored redundancy techniques, identified single points of failure, and practiced integrating monitoring and scalability features using AWS. Teams also prepared for the upcoming industry visit.
Day 5: Site Visit and Security Fundamentals
The final day began with an industry visit to Sojitz Tech-Innovation‘s verification test center in Toyosu, a waterfront district in Tokyo. Students received a briefing on the equipment mounted across 120 racks and engaged in discussions with engineers about the importance of performance evaluation prior to deployment, proof-of-concept testing, and various post-installation verifications. They also learned about real-world cases encountered during these processes.
In the afternoon, Sheryl ‘Shane’ Hermoso (APNIC) engaged with students in a session on cybersecurity—covering device and infrastructure security, vulnerability assessment, and packet analysis, before wrapping up with interim presentations by each team.
At the conclusion of the camp, Prof. Jun Murai (Keio) handed a certificate of participation to each team member, along with a set of APIE-themed stickers and a USB drive as a small token of appreciation.
Meet the Internet Engineers
The closing dinner also featured a special session titled Meet the Internet Engineers, where participants had the unique opportunity to interact with professionals actively shaping the Internet’s infrastructure and governance. This informal yet impactful segment allowed students to ask questions, hear career stories, and gain insights into the diverse paths that lead to roles in Internet engineering and operations.
More than 30 guests joined the camp participants in an izakaya style venue in the Haneda Innovation City, including professionals, academics, APIE alumni and collaborators such as teaching assistant and interns from past camps.
The event offered an inspiring conclusion to the week, bridging the gap between classroom learning and real-world practice, and triggered new curiosity about the broader ecosystem behind the technologies they had been working with throughout the camp.
What is next?
Each team will work on their services started in this camp and prepare for a final presentation on July 2nd, 2025. Stay tuned!
