The closure of an anti-oral fistula is one of the most perplexing problems encountered in oral surgical practice. When one considers the number of operations that have been proposed for this problem, as well as the variety of operations in use today, it is obvious that there is no unanimity of opinion in regard to this matter. Failure to adhere to certain cardinal surgical principles is possibly responsible for many of the difficulties encountered in the management of this problem. The first principle involved is elimination of infection from the maxillary sinus. No attempts should be made to close a fistula until the sinus is entirely clear of infection. Many of the unsuccessful attempts at closure possibly stem from failure to adhere to this important principle. The second principle is adequate soft tissue flaps. The soft tissue flaps must be large enough to cover the bony defect. It must be borne in mind that the bony defect is always larger than the soft tissue opening, and the soft tissue flaps must be adequate to cover the bony defect. The third principle involved is suture the flaps without tension. The flaps should be so designed that when they are sutured, there will be no tension on the suture lines, and the flaps will have no tendency to return to their original position. Adherence to these principles will ensure successful treatment in the majority of cases. Several methods utilizing these principles have been used successfully. Those most frequently used are the palatal flap, the use of tantalum or some similar metal, and the utilization of combination buckle and lingual flaps. For several years we have been using a buckle envelope type of flap with considerable success. This method provides for an ample flap that can be mobilized with ease, and when sutured in position forms a double thickness of tissue over the defect. It will be demonstrated in the present case. This large anteroral opening has been present since extraction of the posterior teeth six months ago. Two previous attempts have been made to close the fistula. The maxillary arch is a dentulous with evidence of recent extraction of the anterior teeth. The fistula extends directly into the left maxillary sinus. Probing of the defect reveals that a large oseous defect was present. Local or general anesthesia is satisfactory for this procedure. However, we most frequently use local anesthesia utilizing a second division block. This block is administered through the greater palatine foramen with an aspirating type syringe. The area of injection is dried, painted with an antiseptic solution, and the needle inserted directly into the greater palatine foramen. It is extended the full length of a 1-5-8 inch needle. Aspiration is accomplished, and if no blood is withdrawn into the syringe, the solution is injected. This injection produces complete anesthesia of the second division of the fifth nerve. The first step in the surgical procedure is an incision, beginning at the posterior aspect of the alveolar ridge, extending along the fistula on both sides, terminating well anteriorly. The incision at the margins of the fistula permits removal of the epithelial lining of the fistula's track. The next procedure is to de-epithelialize an area on the buccal surface. This area should be approximately 5 millimeters in width, and the epithelium should be removed down to the submicosal layer. This may be done by sharp dissection as is being demonstrated here, or it may be accomplished by one of the rotary-type instruments. This drawing shows the extent of de-epithelialization as it is being done by sharp dissection. The next step is to elevate the buccal and lingual flaps. These flaps are elevated until there is free mobility on both sides. The lingual flap is raised almost to the midline, and the buccal flap is high on the lateral surface of the maxilla as possible, and may even be extended on to the lateral surface of the zygoma. These flaps must be freely movable. The next procedure is to make a horizontal cut through the periosteum of the buccal flap. This cut is made as high as possible underneath the flap and is very shallow, merely going through the periosteum. This cut permits mobilization and movement of the buccal flap in a downward direction. The incision is made with a scapelle, and you will note that it extends the full length of the flap and is as high as possible. The next step is to eliminate all infectious material from the maxillary sinus. All patients with anteroural fistulas should be seen in consultation by an otorhinolaryngologist. For in fistulas of long-standing, there is frequently a conconimate chronic infection of the sinus that must be brought under control. In these instances of chronic infection, it is good judgment to make an antero nasal window to permit drainage of the sinus after the fistula has been closed. The antero nasal opening, which is made by the otorhinolaryngologist, is placed beneath the inferior turbinate and must be a sufficient size so it will stay patent. After the anteroural opening has been made, the next step is to clean out the maxillary sinus. A foreign body consisting of a large piece of alginate impression material was present in the sinus. It had undoubtedly gained entrance through the anteroural fistula at the time that impressions were made for a denture. The thickened sinus membrane is removed with curets until all pathological tissue has been eliminated. In anteroural fistulas of long-standing, large amounts of infectious material may be present and considerable attention must be given to its removal. After all pathologic tissue has been removed, the sinus is flooded with normal saline and inspected thoroughly for any residual infectious material. Too much emphasis cannot be given to the importance of completely eradicating all pathologic tissue from the sinus. After these procedures have been completed, the wound is ready for closure. The flaps have been sufficiently mobilized that they can be moved and sutured without tension. Horizontal mattress-type sutures are used, which are placed in such a manner that the de-epitheliized buckle flap is brought under the lingual flap. This is accomplished by starting the suture on the mucosal surface of the palatal flap, passing it through to the periosteal surface, then going from the de-epitheliized side to the periosteal side of the buckle flap, then back from the periosteal to the de-epitheliized side of the buckle flap, and finally bringing the suture back to the palatal flap, passing it from the periosteal to the mucosal surface. To emphasize this method of suturing, placement of another suture will be shown in detail. This forms a horizontal mattress, which, when drawn tight, will bring the buckle flap under the lingual flap. All of the sutures are inserted before any are tied. This is to facilitate the placement of the last sutures, which would be impossible if the previous sutures were tied at time of placement. After all sutures have been inserted, they are tied individually. An instrument tie starting at the posterior part of the wound and coming forward is utilized. Note that each suture is held by a hemostat, which facilitates the handling of the large number of sutures. Note that as the sutures are tied, the flap is readily drawn into the desired position without tension. When all sutures are tied, the buckle flap is held securely in place under the palatal flap. All knots are on the lingual. In this case, the de-epitheliized area was somewhat larger than necessary. Also note that placement of the sutures in this manner allows the margin of the lingual flap to remain free. This free margin is stabilized by placing additional sutures from the margin of the lingual flap to the buckle tissues. This completes the closure. The final closure is demonstrated in this illustration. Note the double layer closure over the area of the fistula. The horizontal cut in the buckle flap has separated to permit movement of this flap. To prevent excessive postoperative edema which might cause tension on the flaps, an extraoral pressure dressing is applied. This dressing consists of a gauze dressing over the left cheek, attached with adhesive tape that goes completely around the neck. This dressing gives additional support and will prevent undue tension to the flaps. To recapitulate, the first step is an incision around the opening, extending along the crest of the alveolar ridge approximately two to three centimeters, anterior and posterior to the fistula. The buckle macoza is deapothelialized for an area of about five millimeters. The lingual and buckle flaps are then elevated to give free mobility to both flaps. An incision is then made through the periosteum of the buckle flap, extending the entire length of the flap. This incision is made as high in the buckle flap as possible. Horizontal mattress sutures are then inserted. These sutures bring the buckle flap under the lingual flap. After all sutures have been inserted, they are then individually tied, which completes the closure. The finished closure produces a double thickness of tissue over the fistulus opening. The horizontal cut in the buckle flap, which allows movement of this flap, is demonstrated in this illustration. The sutures are left in place approximately 10 days. Healing is usually uneventful and rapid. One month post-operatively, complete healing of the fistula has occurred. While there has been minimal shortening of the buckle vestibule, it did not interfere with the construction and function of satisfactory maxillary and mandibular dentures. It must be emphasized that there are no shortcuts to the successful closure of persistent anteroral fistula and strict adherence to detail is essential. Attention to the surgical principles of one, elimination of infection, two, adequate soft tissue flaps, and three, suturing these flaps without tension is necessary. In our hands, the utilization of the buckle envelope type of flap has been very successful in the management of this problem.


This boy, Harshal Kadam suffers from a condition called as epidermolysis bullosa. It is a very, very rare condition wherein the skin blisters at the smallest of injuries. Basically, it is a genetic condition and it is very difficult to handle these children. A lot of these children die at birth. Some of them live up to the teenagers and very few of them survive to full adulthood. The main problem here is the epidermis that is the outermost layer of the skin is not formed properly.  It is extremely painful for the children and they have to undergo prolonged dressings. As a result of this very many injuries in the hand, slowly the injuries merge together and all the fingers get stuck together. So, that is why as you can see in this boy, both the hands and the feet, the toes, all of them are stuck together in the form of a cocoon. So, these are known as cocoon hands or the cocoon feet. Also, in addition, these children also have problems with the intestinal lining, the esophageal lining. That is why the mouth is a little small. They are unable to open the mouth fully. The esophagus is involved and they are unable to eat properly and therefore their intake is less and they are always, always small for their weight. He had come to us a few years back when we had seen him when he was about 4 years old. We had suggested surgery. Unfortunately, for very many social reasons they were not able to undergo surgery at that time and they came up towards about a month ago when we planned a treatment plan for him. It is a very challenging case to perform because it requires multidisciplinary approach. We need to involve the dermatologist, we need to involve anesthetist, we need to involve a periodic surgeon, our nursing staff, our ward staff, the OT staff. Everybody needs to be sensitized to the special needs of these children. And as a team we made a plan for him and we planned two surgeries at one shot that is all under one anesthesia. And this was accomplished at Manipal Hospital. We did a reconstructive leg surgery and also gastroostomy for his feeding because he was hardly putting on weight and he could barely stand although he was about 8 or 10 years of age. However, having done a few of these cases, we are quite comfortable handling these children. This child had only one desire when he came to me. He wanted to walk. He said he is quite comfortable with his hands, he is using a mobile, he is able to draw, he is able to color but because of the knee contracture, he is unable to walk. And the only request of the family was if we can help him walk, they would be very grateful. Now, in a normal course of events where there is a contracture around the knee or the elbow we would release, take skin from the thigh and then apply it on the wound. But in his case, we didn't have any much skin and the only area I could take any skin was from the scalp. So we had to shave his head under anesthesia very carefully making sure that we didn't cause any blisters. This baby was lubricated very well with liquid paraffin in the pre-op room. The entire anesthesia and OT team were sensitized to these type of cases and the baby was moving himself from the table to onto the OT table so there was no friction of the skin. Generally anesthesia was induced by inhalation method. A scalp pain was secured with 24 gauge cannula. Fortunately for us the incubation was not very difficult. We had used a video larigoscope and a five-member endotracheal tube was inserted and we were secured with a Vaseline cost tape. Having done that, then we harvested skin from the scalp and we were fortunate enough for us to get enough skin to cover both the knee contractures which were released to be covered. The other thing with these children is that they are extremely difficult to anesthetize. Even getting a simple thing like an IV line to give a glucose drip is very difficult. And therefore we had a lot of challenges with him trying to get an IV line. We cannot stick any blisters on the skin. Everything has to be a soft compressible bandage. And fortunately everything went on well. Right now both his knees are released because he has been bedridden for so long. He needs to undergo some amount of physiotherapy and walking help before he is able to walk freely on his own. We hope to see him soon so that we can release his hands and make him use all the fingers instead of the hand as a single unit. Each of the fingers will be able to move separately and he should be able to use his hand fully. I am very grateful to the Manipal Hospital and all the doctors and their assistants. I am grateful to them.


This thing on yeah, okay. Good morning. Let's let's try that again. Good morning Welcome to the Cisco sponsored track sessions. This is our third session out of four today We're gonna be talking about deploying and operating an NFV cloud We've got a couple of great presenters Narendra Narendra and Juan Ramon Acosta are gonna come up and give their presentation Juan is one of our principal architects Narend senior product manager Been working with both of them for a while. You're in for a great presentation Just to save you all the trouble of Snapping pictures of the screens during the presentations all of these slides are gonna be up on slide share within Probably 48 hours. You can all if you can go right now So there's a general Cisco account on slide share where you can go get you all of our stuff But the slides from all of our sponsored track sessions will be up Certainly before the weekend so you can save yourself a lot of space in your photo library The other thing I just wanted to remind you of is on your way out today We're gonna sort of funnel you all out that way stage right Don't forget to grab your Cisco runs on open stack running socks Yes, thank you. Thank you very much so without any further ado Narend and Juan and Deploying and operating an NFV cloud All right, thank you Gary We will have some time for Q&A at the end Morning folks. I hope you're all doing well So about that good morning from Gary if you did not notice about how insistent it can be if you can You can just look at that slide there, you know Do you see anything about that little guy on the left hand side there with the glasses on how does he look like? You know just look at Gary one more time So anyway, so you guys are having a great summit here glad to be here glad to be talking to you we have a Combination of a presentation today for you in terms of not just deploying a cloud and managing and operating it as well as Deploying NFV applications and if we stack On top of it so that you have end-to-end solution that runs on open stack. It lives on open stack breeze on open stack So one's going to be my partner in crime to talk about the second part of it. So let's get going So There's a big major transformation going on on the service provider Space, you know, it's primarily driven by open source. That's why we're all here Lots of different types of open source projects as well as NFV in terms of virtualizing the network functions And SDN and each of these are not something by themselves. They have a whole bunch of ripples in their own Accord in terms of you know NFV is not just about virtualizing anybody's network function. It's all about being standardized interoperable interworkable and all of that so With all these three forces coming together, you know, it's basically driving the overall transformation for SP's in terms of You know, you name it and that application is being disrupted today in the way that it can be managed deployed Operated as well as used for business outcomes. So mobility managed services video security general purpose VNF workloads DHCP DNS whatever you want to call all of them are moving on into this transformation one key Aspect about this transformation is while all of this is happening at multiple different levels multiple different areas on the infrastructure side There's a couple of thoughts one is you know infrastructure needs to be kind of completely glued to some of these applications However, at the same time Such infrastructure needs to be available in a general purpose manner so that I can deploy any kind of workloads Providing me different business outcomes On the same infrastructure the infrastructure needs to be flexible enough to accommodate those different workloads As well as be able to accommodate the different needs and capabilities that the infrastructure needs to provide And so this is a bunch of these things that we're going to talk about in many different ways But those are the demands that we are seeing right and why why obviously, you know We want to reduce network appliances purpose-built appliances and move towards a more generic infrastructure where things can be easily expandable reusable movable and even removable Automated service creation so One's going to take you right into it in terms of how quickly you can turn on a service today compared to what it used to be before and Self-service personalization again, you know infrastructure is one thing But how do you do it do it from the application on top, right? We're going to cover these two aspects in a lot detail on the second half of this presentation and From an infrastructure point of view again, you know If you're used to SP networks SP infrastructure one thing that you always want to have is availability resiliency and You know, how do you get that out of an infrastructure, you know, you want to generalize the infrastructure? You want to virtualize everything, but can I manage my availability? Can I manage my downtime to be as minimal as zero or close to zero and how can I achieve that? So we'll talk about some of these aspects today a Little bit in terms of the approaches being taken in the market So this is a survey from light reading covering about 120 service providers And you look at this slide. I mean the key messages are you know, your yellow boxes there, right? There's three or essentially four different types of approaches Seen here. However, you know, you can club them into three overall. One is a do-it-yourself 20% of those customers are looking at How can I pull all of these things together whether it's hardware software orchestration management? I'm going to pull it together I'm going to put it all in a manner that it can be usable Operatable etc and there's a certain amount of percentage about 15 or 14 percent Who talk about a la carte in terms of you know, I'm going to bring a la carte pieces and figure out how I Manage this and there's a good 40 percent of these Customers out of 120 who said I would rather prefer a pre-integrated solution. So what's pre-integrated pre-integrated is something that's You know put together hardware software VNF orchestration management You know VNF management, etc. All together Tested validated so that you know what you can expect out of the system You know what sort of services you can turn on what are some of the things that you actually cannot achieve and you've got to go For a different option, right? So that's what I would call pre-integrated and a majority of those customers are in that bucket is a 26% of them You know Similar to one of the adoption curves that you would have typically looked at a part of these customers are also waiting to see how things unfold so that I can they can follow the leaders and Save you know kind of take the safety net if you will So, okay, so that's what the customers are saying, but what exactly is needed for a successful? NFV stack a successful NFV outcome Right You got to look at this from more than one dimension Obviously, right? So what are some of those key dimensions? One is obviously the virtual management or the virtual infrastructure management So we have open stack, which is the most popular virtual infrastructure manager out there In the container space Kubernetes obviously is gaining a lot of ground and it's pretty hard and emerging in terms of for manager The second part is the data plane itself and we talk about Networking packet processing packet pushing packet management Obviously, you know data plane is the most important thing when it comes to actual customer data and customer outcomes So in this regard, you know, we have DPDK making you know bringing in a lot of innovation. We've had a Sarai or V to give us that wire rate like Behavior I won't you know, I chose the word behavior instead of performance because you got to do a whole bunch of tuning at different places As well as Fido if you don't know Fido here is Fido fd.io is what it's called but it's also referred to popularly as Fido Fido is Cisco's project of vector packet processing that has been open sourced got a big community around it now people, you know Committing code releasing things month on a monthly basis leverages DPDK and is proven to provide Amazing performance with certain workloads so at the high level Do need to work on data plane faster data plane better IO in this world and In terms of configuration and management interactions, obviously, you know, you do need to have data models and automation IETF is working on this in a in a very detailed manner.  That's an operating system So that's popularly Linux And then storage sef is being very popular for its resiliency and redundancy as well as some of the availability capabilities And Docker as an infrastructure as well is gaining momentum in this space from a container point of view So that's the infrastructure But somebody has to manage the networking components in terms of building overlays taking off overlays dynamically configuring networks for a service chain that's coming up So obviously SDN or SDN controllers are very important from a Cisco point of view VTS or what's your topology system and ACI application-centric infrastructure or two options But however from a generic in a generic perspective SDN and network integration as well as configuration management is very critical in this space There's a whole bunch of activity going on in service chaining connectivity. How do I bring up VNS? How do I chain them? How do I connect them? How do I take them off? Yet at the same time get better performance get the you know visibility get the perform I get the Flexibility that I need so that's where IETF has been helping us the whole bunch of standardization and of course segment routing is something new that can do some wonders taking your Networking all the way down to the top of rack or the compute node and isolating Well, you know flows for visibility as well as better performance and above all You know end-to-end requirements in terms of standardization You know interoperability across vendors across stacks, you know mainly driven by ETSI and OPNFV So another dimension so we looked at what are the requirements different levels capabilities at the same time when you look at What type of deployments customers want to go with it's not one or two It's end-to-end across the network in all places of the network And if you see from here from your left-hand side to the right-hand side, it starts all the way from the customer edge to the cloud and If you see the footprint the use cases are varied from left to right here However, the common ask is an infrastructure that can enable multiple of these things that can be easily and commonly managed across end-to-end and Be monitored Be troubleshot easily, etc. Etc. There's a whole bunch of Examples for each one of these places, you know these slides are going to be available on slide share So we'll leave that for your nighttime reading So overall, you know, we looked at the deployments. We looked at what are some of the key Components what's going on in the industry in terms of transformations All in all if we had to summarize what are the key requirements of an SP infrastructure? It boils down to these six not only these six, but the top six right the very common themes that we've heard over and over So one is carrier class infrastructure. So You virtualize you give me the flexibility you give me The expansion capabilities, etc. But don't take away my performance Don't take away my availability that I'm used to right and the end customers are used to in Through which SLAs are written up SLAs have to be met etc. It's very critical Use case agnostic. So we've seen this there's many use cases many different places, but make sure that Each one of these use cases by can be enabled by an infrastructure that can do all these things Standards based modular elastic standards based obviously, so that's in there is interoperability one of the key things why we are all here is about open source and Reducing the vendor lock-in, but is but enable interoperability and better capabilities for the customer, right? So obviously makes sense Modular and elastic be able to expand or reduce my infrastructure as well as be able to expand The business workloads that I'm running on an infrastructure very easily without tearing down systems and having a multi-hour downtime Have to install newer sets of capabilities and unrelated Sort of disjointed from the existing infrastructure, etc Of course all in all on top of this put a little circle around all your infrastructure and say it's got to be Managed by a single unified management system or a set of capabilities where you should be able to monitor the system Proactively as well as you know configure operate, etc and One of the most important things that we have learned over the last few years Interacting with customers is everything is great You know it goes back to that 40% of the customers who want to have that package solution. It comes to this is Let's bring all of these together, but at the end of the day I would like to have one single vendor as the owner for my support contact So if there's an issue there's one number I call right and that's always going to be Gary, right? So If you don't know Gary we will introduce him at the end of the show Alright, so multi-level security. This is another important thing that we kind of drop or ignore very often is Is my infrastructure secure? When I deploy this in a service provider environment Is it capable of Avoiding some of the attacks from inside and outside Can I manage my passwords? Can I manage my file ownerships and a whole bunch of things in ways that it really is a carrier class infrastructure? so How are we? You know viewing the ETSI NFE framework. How are we delivering some of these capabilities through Cisco? So here's the Etsy manner framework Very familiar to you folks what we have done here is we have divided this into two Fundamental things the bottom half is called the NFV infrastructure and the top half is called the you know quote-unquote NFV application layer And in infrastructure, basically, it's a set of compute storage network hardware. I you know virtualized and provided to you as virtualized capabilities of the same with respect using OpenStack as the virtual infrastructure manager and In Cisco NFE I you know we have a whim called a Cisco virtualized infrastructure manager NFE I monitoring unified management SDN controllers and Hardware in terms of compute network and storage Here's the Cisco NFE architecture You know again bottom half is the infrastructure as we discussed the top half is the VNF manager The network whim as the SDN or the SDN controller orchestration and you know resource management with NSO which is stay left and a whole bunch of VNF CSR 1000, ASAV, etc. That one's going to talk about to you in a minute Another important aspect is you know while we do this while we enable all these things that we discussed in the last few minutes We actually do want to do it in an open manner so we have a trifecta of partnership with Red Hat and Intel along with Cisco to drive innovation to drive open-source work in OpenStack in container space in many other spaces like you know Kimo, etc. And Also drive some of the projects, you know looking at all the common requirements We would like to come back to the community and drive some of these projects with you so that you know all of us benefit from those deliveries Use cases let's jump to this Right, so as we talked about it's the same common infrastructure, but can deploy virtual managed services Mobile infrastructure mobile applications as well as media and generic SP workloads So it's one single infrastructure, which is flexible to enable capabilities for each of these things according to what workload you want to deploy and And all of that or most of that is powered by what is called as Cisco VIM Cisco virtualized infrastructure manager I'm going to build this out in the interest of time You know it's got a installer and a life cycle manager, which can Install your OpenStack cloud in about three to four hours Consistently every time with all the configuration that you want to be enabled in the system The the control plane is containerized and some of the industry folks are now moving towards this or have plans to It's you know, we've written a bunch of tools and we've open sourced all of these for HA verification else check virtual throughput VM throughput testing as well as Others where we have written these tools knowing the requirements from customers and then we will open source them so that you know the community can Benefit from this as well as improve on them depending on their own customer requirements on top of that We've enabled some cool capabilities for logging and monitoring. Of course security is an ingrained piece of work within the Cisco VIM and its CI CD enabled so that You know things can be Delivered as quickly as in less than 24 hours to a customer. Here's the list of tools I'll leave this to you for Peruzer later, but Essentially each one of these addresses a specific part or a specific need in terms of how an infrastructure should be operated Or she can be operated and proactively managed so with respect to use cases, let's Double-click on this and I'm going to request one to take over and talk about what you'll manage services. Thank you Thank you, Naren. Good morning everyone Cisco's Multi-service platform VMS is being thought of Taken in consideration some of the service provider requirements. I think Norensa's like three capture I think the essence of Their motivation to go BNF and that's basically agility how fast and consistently can I deploy? very well-known Network constructs for my customers Reliably and at the same time be able to do them elastically that means that depending on the demands and depending on my customer requirements, I can actually do them without having to ship an army of people in Based at all in software. So VMS provides you with a group of prepackage standard Functions that we call service packages which are a standard connectivity models for an enterprise to connect to the service provider or to provide wide area and access to their entire organization and We are doing all that orchestration and configuration using industry open standards young models So we're basically are taking is the configuration sets that need to be pushed into the network functions We abstract them with the young with young models and then we orchestrate them The service providers also can take advantage of the platform to create their own their own value out in Different levels one of them is if what the service packs provide to them is enough And they just need based on a customer need and little tweak or an an adjustment They can extend what the service packs Provide but if they need to build a brand new service, they can actually use the VMS SDK that we provide. So let's diving a little bit more into what are the Managed services for service providers that we we provide so VMS is a cloud ready application being cloud ready means is you have to take care of the operations of the service provider In essence, you need to be able to build new services create a catalog of offerings And also be able to make them available to the customer So VMS provides you to create that as an operator as I mentioned using the combination of service packs and the extensibility tools and also provides another control aspect of the platform as an administrator Who has access to the system? Who are we going to be managing or defining as a tenant and what are the resources those tenants are using and the most Important is the self-service aspect to be cloud ready. You actually need to put all the things that are already known and Systematically repeatable and they are well-defined put them on the self-service Portal so the customer can just make choices and deploy and start working When you look at the VMS service portal You as a customer are going to be able to purchase new services those services that as a service provider You put together for that customer whether our customizations of VMS or out of the box You also can define what are your? Service level agreements that you're going to actually contractually Obtained from the service provider as a customer and you're also going to get a Monitoring view of how is the health of your services given you some I will say basic Information and telemetrics of how your service is operating from the service provider perspective again for those Canonical services that they deploy and they're providing service for they have a viewing to How is the service performing? Is there any help that I can provide to my customer if there are any deviations from the standard behaviors? Okay, so you at one point have a one-stop shop for Basically managing all the network services, but the important aspect here is the platform is built Based on the promise of open stack that is resilient That is flexible and also can elastically deploy virtual network functions at the point of consumption or where the customer needs them but that also brings to the table is the ability for the customer to manage their assets in their Information as a traveling by defining probably policies or different types of traffic management Prioritization that they need When we start looking at the side management from the customer service provider perspective They have the control of their services They are consuming and they don't need to worry about sending up a group of people to actually rack on stack and monitor All that information is collected by the platform over the cloud basically having a constant monitoring of the devices or the Network functions that have been deployed for the customer Collecting some data and summarizing and presenting them on an easy consumable manner The service packs of function packs that I mentioned earlier are really as I mentioned the well-standard connectivity models that a cross service provider Service providers in the world customers are consuming The first use case that we're presenting is cloud VPN Which is basically provide a customer and enterprise the ability to connect to the wide area network But also provide them access secure remote access into their organization VMS will provide the ability to select to the customer what level of security they want whether they want to provide remote access for Mobile users, but also they can define what type of security inspection they want on traffic that is coming in But I think most importantly is that they actually select the ability to deploy their wide area access Dynamically and they can choose what are the capabilities that that access to the one would be The connectivity to the sites is usually IPsec and a secure manner So all the traffic that is exiting the organization through the service chain is going to be protected end to end another common use case that Service providers are dealing with on on the industry is they already have a lot of MPLS Network sites deployed and that is a very costly service. How would they actually bring those? Remote offices to consume virtualized network security services into VMS We provide what we are calling the converge edge which in networking terms will be equivalent to a virtual P So the customer does not need to actually redeploy another service chain or another virtual service It just tells VMS. I want this endpoint to be connected and converge into my security services The next use case that we are putting forward is the concept of virtualizing the entire branch office What that means in the past you actually have a guy willing in a Set of devices rack and stack firewall remote routers and everything So what we are now requesting is deploy the simple or smallest Open stack deployment and all in one or a KVM as basic as that connected into the service provider network and what VMS will do is provide The customer a choice of catalog. How do you want your branch to look like and based on that selection? VMS will basically push the flavors and the images to the remote hypervisor Configure it stitch it and make it available for connectivity If the customer will require access to the wide area network that VMS will also will be taking care of that by who can either converging it into the security service access or Creating a new IP sector tunnel into the wide area network access Okay, here VMS is still is living and breeding the open stack promise which is Elastically deploy virtual network functions at the point where the user needed Reducing the cost the maintenance and since VMS as a plus platform is providing the monitoring and the lifecycle Neither the customer and the service provider have to spend more than is necessary to lifecycle and maintain those VMs increasing Dramatically their service time For example, the average time to deploy a full cloud VPN service is in the range of Five to ten minutes depending on the location and the latency between the two endpoints the last service that we provide on VMS is basically a Network control plane. So basically you are controlling and managing your wide area network from the cloud the only thing the customer needs to do is to physically deploy a Customer advice on the customer premises Pointed to the service provider network and zero touch configuration will basically Allow that device to join the wide area network. It will allow it to open up connectivity either over the internet or MPLS using dynamic multi-point VPN so the customer can actually Decide which path the traffic is going to navigate or go through to reach another endpoint within their Corporate network going through the service provider network the ability for the service provider to manage the I1 or the the wide area network for a customer relies on the fact that the Service is constantly monitoring what happens at the endpoints whether our physical or virtual the Managed the management plane will constantly be collecting the information and will be able to react either to changes or anomalies that happen within the service that is being deployed and Cisco's play for Sover-defined wide area network is basically embodied by the I1 use case that VMS as a function pack is providing on the solution This is like to summarize is what are the advantages that the service provider and the customer bring to the table? By using VMS on top of OpenStack thinking that OpenStack will provide all those benefits that we've been talking about Just very briefly to close out on the other aspect of VMS VMS provides you with extension points So as we mentioned if you need to extend the service packs You have the ability to actually add on the value that you need in order to make a difference and make the customer happy and use A business increase your ability to deploy new services we provide Ability to extend every single point along the workflow of provisioning a service All the way from this serve the cloud service embodiment Which is what you put on your portal and your front-end to what is the configuration that is going to be pushed into the network device? All going across the platform You can also build additional services if you as a customer have a very Prefer customer. I'm sorry vendor of network functions and you don't want to use Cisco We provide the ability for you to insert that network function into the platform and manage it We call it opaque services because if you as a customer want to take advantage of your investment We are just saying VMS will lifecycle and monitor you VNF Go at it plug it in and it's up to you as a service provider to provide all the guardrails and monitoring aspects That you need for that VNF to work But be but from the VMS perspective it still is a managed service on the cloud that will be subject to all the Constraints and rules that VMS puts for managing virtual network functions on OpenStack if you need to create a Brand-new service the platform is providing you with an SDK that we actually made available on the Cisco DevNet on Cisco DevNet you can actually get a step-by-step tutorial and examples on how to build a brand new virtual managed service that you can plug in and Deploy it into the VMS management platform Okay Just to summarize Out of the box as we have on VMS 3.0 the product rate supported Network functions are listed on our right-hand side and for those that are POC Which means Cisco will not be able to provide support are the ones showed on the left side and As I was mentioning on the previous slides, these are the VNFs that if you don't want to use Cisco VNFs these are the ones that you can actually play with on VMA on the VMS platform With this we conclude the presentation for VMS We'll like to open it for some questions We've got about four or five minutes for questions. We've got mics on both sides or I can bring you a handheld Thank you There was a session yesterday afternoon when Verizon talked about a gap in OpenStack They have a requirement for the RBAC function rule rules based access control Do you recognize that as a as a gap in OpenStack? Can you support it in another way? Do you recognize that whole issue that they raised? No, honestly, I haven't been able to attend that session so you know RBAC in terms of Managing OpenStack or RBAC in terms of Network functions and enabling network functions. I mean Okay, I can give you An answer based on the VMS framework. So VMS is actually managing the network for you And it's actually on a control environment. So the service provider. Yes, we'll be exposed by that Hold on the OpenStack But since the environment at least VMS is on the management protected side of the service provider the service provider and The service provider has control to prevent Unauthorized access to that. That's one side VMS will only allow access to users defined within the authentication control plane of VMS and For accessing any resources direct to OpenStack That is a service account that is never exposed to end users or administrators. This is something that the data center Operations team will have under control and very certain will be under the regulations of the security and trust team of the service provider But we don't and also we don't Store any clear text passwords. So we are at least on that on that front restricting The access from our authentication and roll access level that we define on VMS So we are kind of a layer on top of OpenStack preventing that Anybody else? Okay, you're gonna make me work for this, aren't you? so there is a Linux foundation sponsored open source project called on-app so basically is a telecom operator Leading the the effect to I think the the project is cover similar things about the Whatever you just presented. So my question is how the Cisco What advantage or strategy Cisco has to you know pursue the those VMS and to To convince the operator they will they will not choose the open source one. I will choose the Cisco one Thank you Okay Yes, I mean I actually wouldn't look at it in that manner whether it's Cisco or OpenStack, right? So this is something that VMS is something That's being built and packaged given customer demand And if you see there's openness all around in terms of the platform as well as the VNFs and The orchestration and you name it there is a piece of open source in there that can be integrated with In terms of own app, I mean Cisco participates in all you know all of these open source Activities, right? So this it's actually not the case of its own app or Cisco It's actually have the collaboration to build the best Essentially, right? Just from the technical perspective some of the things that we do when we get feedback from the open source community is we need We look at what is the standard or the new standard being put forward And we tried to either align with them on our roadmap But we just need to keep in mind that the project to started probably Later than when we started VMS. This has been an evolution So there is going to be a point where we are going to have to converge technically on some aspects to Take the best of both worlds, but I think Some of the executives will be better Positioned to comment on what is that is going to happen at this point I think this is the best offer that we can provide Based on the current conditions and the current availability Okay We'll take one more quick one because we got to clear the room for the next presenters and I'll make it a quick follow-up you mentioned that You provide a lot of the layers for security including our back that the gentleman mentioned that that open stack does not provide Is this a solution that's probably going to be permanent in VMS? So do you see open stack at some point providing that later layer and Cisco stepping back and letting open stack do that So we do our own our back from the context of VMS. So at least we are Indirectly being a stopgap by no means we are replacing open stack We are always building on top of open stack if there is any new enhancement coming from open stack We will take advantage of them, but we'll never try to replace them Yes, I just want to follow up on that right so from an infrastructure or open stack point of view if you look at it There's a whole bunch of things that we do today in Cisco way in terms of the security measures password management, etc etc, etc But it doesn't stop right there. In fact, for example, Barbican is key store The key store project right so the ptl is from Cisco de macaw and So that's a clear example of standardizing things into open stack Rather than creating these snowflakes outside of it, right? It's totally unmanageable for everybody for the vendor as well as the customer and the community. So All right, yes, I think people are referring to the problem with Keystone having just as far last time I checked for roles per tenant like a member admin And to others and of course Service provider requires other roles like I don't know what IT administrator can do what HR can do and all that so it's it's missing, but Keystone has that roadmap I'm just that's a good. Thank you. Thank you Appreciate that. Thank you. Thanks everybody Norene Juan. Thank you very much Don't forget grab your runs on open stack running socks outstage, right? We've got another session coming up in just about 10 minutes networking across containers and VMs Thank you folks. Have a great afternoon. Thank you very much. Thank you. Stop by the Cisco booth There are via VIM and VMS demos going on at the Cisco booth


So we've got the transportation. So now you're moving, you're going somewhere, plane, bus, whatever you're doing to get there, and it's for work. So you would think then the transportation is legit business related, ordinary and necessary in that case. So you can deduct the cost of travel by airplane, train, bus, or car between your home and your business destination. Note that the car gets a little bit messy because then you've gotta deal with that whole thing about how are you deducting the cars the mileage method versus the direct method and whatnot. And then, so that gets, but obviously if you're traveling by airplane or train, it's fairly straightforward unless you have a situation where it's partial business, partial work, and then you have that gray area once again. Okay, so taxi, commuter bus, limousine, so you can deduct fares for these and other types of transportation between the airport and station and your hotel or between the hotel and your work location away from home. So baggage and shipping, you can deduct the cost of sending baggage and a sample or display material between your regular and temporary work locations, car or truck. You can deduct the cost of operating and maintaining your vehicle when traveling away from home on business. You can deduct actual expenses or the standard mileage rate. So here we go again with the car, which is a little bit more unusual. Now you're not just doing a commuting thing. You're not just visiting a client in your local area. You're traveling away from home, but using the car to do so as opposed to an airplane and whatnot. So once again, you can deduct actual expenses or the standard mileage rate discussed earlier under car and truck expenses as well as business related tolls and parking. So if you rent a car while away from home on business, you can deduct only the expense use portion of the expenses, the business use portion. So if you rent a car, you're deducting the business use. So meals and lodging. So you can deduct the cost of meals and lodging if your business trip is overnight or long enough that you need to stop for sleep or rest to properly perform your duties. So you can usually, you can use actual expenses or the standard meal allowance to calculate your deduction. So meals are another one that gets a little bit tricky. So they actually have like standard meal allowances which are, which gives you a little bit of a somewhat of a safe place to think about what the average meals are because you can imagine the situation where someone is traveling, your business traveling and but you're having very extravagant meals which is way over the top of what you really need to eat to sustain yourself for the business purpose of the meal which you would think that would be kind of a personal thing as opposed to the business thing and that's where great areas come in. Same with the method of travel. If you get to deduct the travel, then people will go in first class then and that kind of stuff that that's where the tax code kind of manipulates people's behavior and whatnot in some ways. So in most cases, you can deduct only 50% of your meal expenses. And that was a, I think that's the general idea there being, look you're gonna eat, you would have had to eat the meals anyways. You may have been able, if you were home to cook your own meals and therefore it would have been cheaper or something. So maybe if you're away from home, you're having to pay for meals which are more expensive. So that I think that's the rationale of why they come to this 50% of meal expenses. So however, business meals are 100% deductible if the meals are food and beverages provided by a restaurant and paid or incurred after December 31st, 2020 and before January 1st, 2023. So you've got this somewhat ambiguity with the meal situation. If you want to dive into that in more detail, you can see publication 463 for additional information. So cleaning. So you can deduct the cost of dry cleaning and laundry while on your business trip because you got to look good. You got to have your suit dry cleaned and whatnot. It's like a uniform. You have to have it. It's got to be ready to roll. Otherwise people don't listen to you. Telephone. You can deduct the cost of business calls while on your business trip, including business communication by fax machine or other communication devices. Tips. You can deduct the tips you pay for any expense in this list. So more information. For more information about travel expenses, you can see publication 463. So reimbursing your employees for expenses. So now you have a situation. You got your schedule C business or whatever your business in. You have employees that are doing the business trip thing and possibly they're spending their own money and you want to pay for it somehow. How are you going to do that? You can have some kind of reimbursement of their business related expenses. So, and then there's going to be some standardization rules that you might be able to follow on these kind of reimbursement type of situations as well because you can imagine when you have a reimbursement situation, people trying to manipulate that kind of situation. So just to give you an idea how that, why that might happen. Like if someone goes on a business trip or something like that and they're able to expend extravagantly and you reimburse them for the spending, you get the expense of the reimbursement and you're actually basically paying them over and above what was necessary for just the business trip. So you're kind of giving them wages in that case. So in other words, you can imagine a situation where people are trying to give people wages without being subject to taxes. Social security, right? Cause you're kind of giving them income in the fact that you're allowing them to spend extravagantly beyond what would be necessary for the trip. You're reimbursing them for that extravagant kind of behavior and if it's a reimbursement, it might not be included in income on the W-2, not subject to federal income tax, social security and Medicare. So you can see where there's gonna have to be lines that'll be drawn to how this is gonna work. So the reimbursement you deduct and the manner in which you deduct it depend in part on whether you would reimburse the expenses under an accountable plan or a non-accountable plan. So you can dive into more detail if you have this reimbursement kind of situation on the difference between the accountable plan and the non-accountable plan. For details, you can see chapter 11 of publication 535. That chapter explains accountable and non-accountable plans and tells you whether to report the reimbursement on your employee's W-2, right? So if you have to report the reimbursement on the W-2 then if it's on line one as income, it might be subject to taxes. So then, so now, when you have this reimbursement situation set up, you wanna try to do it properly by the books here so that you can maximize the benefits of the reimbursement and properly account for it and do the whole thing. And you can, if you're in that situation, again, take a look at the publication 535. You can find on the IRS website, irs.gov, irs.gov.


All right. On the dot, let me share, you have the slides in the invite. Can everybody hear me? Yes. Thanks. So functional updates from infrastructure, production particularly. So in last week, we built a streaming backup solution with Wally. This came after the adage. We basically decided to have a almost zero loss. I think it's every minute we push the wall segments into S3 and assure object storage, which means that we can actually restore the database to any point in time. It's been working for a month almost. It's working really well. It's great actually. We also moved all the front end and back end fleet to the ARM environment. ARM is a Azure resource management. We were using the classic environment, which was the old one. They have the new one. This is kind of the same thing that AWS did some time ago. And we used the opportunity to split API web, get and psychic load to different machines, to different set of machines. This enabled us to basically downsize a lot of the hosts. Instead of 20 hosts that are exactly the same. There are many more hosts, but they're much, much cheaper. And that actually reduced the bill. We also removed the legacy original NFS back and forth. It's gone. It was 48 devices and it was basically wasting money. We also build a continuous delivery system for development boxes using Terraform. It's basically... So if you want a development box, you just need to send a merge request. It gets merged into master and the box is gonna pop up. That's it. That gets us out of the business of actually delivering this provision in this kind of boxes. We also enabled Postgres load balancing in production last week. It's actually quite interesting. You can see how the load changes and it's making the database much more resilient. But we still have some challenges there, but it's actually working better. And we also moved all the Prometheus analog monitoring to the new ARM environment to the fleet-to-arm process that we started doing. We used this opportunity also for another thing, which challenges scale. We're basically in unexplored territories for what we were doing. We need to update upscale Prometheus from 7 gigs of RAM to 30 gigs of RAM because it was basically dropping metrics on the floor. It was just not capable to keep up. We're also hitting IO limits on the database. This means that every now and then the database is basically performing a checkpoint flash to disk. And it blocks because it just can't keep up. We're just getting more data and more and more. And mirrors are also being a problem right now. They are performing once per day to reduce the pressure. Else they were basically hovering the file system all the time. There is an ongoing effort on this from the development side because we are going to be changing the way it works. But that's going to happen in 9.1 or 2, if I remember correctly. Security, we are trying to get people, we don't want people to SSH into production servers. We raised this issue up and we got a lot of pushback from a lot of teams because basically they need to SSH into run Rails console to do their work. That's fine, but it is actually a problem of tooling. We don't have the right tooling to actually enable people to do their work. And it's showing. We also have challenges on resiliency. So the moment when we changed the fleet for ARM, we released a lot of power on the front end and the back end started struggling. That's when we hit the IO limit on the database. Yesterday, it seemed to be a good push that was taking us down. We still don't really know because there was a lack of observability. We're being impacted that way. So we have a couple, quite a set of challenges ahead. And in the next week, we expect to have the streaming backup for all the databases that we have right now. There are version GitLab.com, for example, and some other sites that we own that they're not actually being. They are being backed up with snapshots, but we don't have enough backup. We would also like to have a backup for files that is going to be a long one because we have basically a lot of data. It's going to take a while, but we would like to at least have that ongoing. We also want to remove the legacy file storage one, which is one of the first hosts we had for shared files, for example, logs or artifacts, etc. I think we have something like 20 terabytes of artifacts now, which is a lot. We want to drop the server to replace it with cheaper hosts and more of them. We want to move to Vault instead of Chef Vault, basically because Chef Vault does not scale with the amount of people we have around and the amount of hosts and secrets we have around. And it's getting really challenging to actually use it. We would like to start using service discovery and real-time configuration for the fleet. We're going to need this to start using things like review apps for staging. We will basically need to have a way of dynamically manage the fleet, not so rigid as it is with Chef right now. We would like to start building VMs and container images with Chef Solo, which means use our own Chef configuration to actually trigger these VM and container images built. We will do that for review apps and afterwards we will use that for production, separating what's pets from cattle. Pets being the machines that are around, the ones that we adopt, for example, NFS servers, and cattle, everything else that is basically ephemeral. For example, front-end machines like web workers or psychic, etc. We will like to move deployments out of the terminal into Marvin to start doing deployments with chat ops. We took the first steps that way by starting using Chef push jobs and it's working well so far. The next thing we want to do is basically get that out of the terminal so people don't need to SSH anymore into production to perform a deploy. And finally, we would like to have multiple replicas to do load balancing across all of them. Right now we have just one replica and one primary. We would like to have at least two replicas. That's ongoing. That should be soon enough. But I don't know if we will have more of them. We need to basically discuss that. And finally, any questions? I will stop sharing now and we'll check the chat. Yeah, so regarding ARM, that's Azure Resource Management. We have Azure. They had the classic environment where they have some shape of machines and they're basically pushing everyone. They basically have a new infrastructure. That's all the change. It's not the CPU architecture. It's just that they're pushing everyone to this new infrastructure out of the classic one. The problem is that we had half the fleet on one side on the classic and half the fleet on the new one on the ARM. And we had a peering network in between them and that basically costs money. So we started pushing everything to the new infrastructure instead of the classic one so we can stop paying this money that is basically waste. Containers in our infrastructure, not yet. We would like to. The thing is that we need to basically first, we need a way to build and configure these containers with our current chef because everything needs to play along. And that's what we're working on right now. We will move. We will start moving things to container. The things that I don't exactly know at what rate, but that's containers on its own is not a goal per se. It's basically a side effect of what is coming. I'm scheduled with a container scheduler. Yes. I mean, that's the beauty of it, right? Any more questions? Pablo, you said that one push can take us down, but you're talking about parallel get pushes, right? You're not talking about a single instant pushing. The problem is that we have an observability problem there. We don't really know exactly what we do know is that there was a huge spike in rights in the NFS server. And it basically clocked the NFS server and then we went down because across the fleet everything was waiting on IO. The problem is that we don't exactly know because we don't have good enough metrics there to understand where that came from. So we need to first understand exactly where is it coming from. There's a discussion with Giddily, with the Giddily team to have some form. So same thing that Bitbucket did, where they were greatly mining, so to speak, the Gidd access. We will probably need to do something similar to avoid some people to basically push a lot of data at once. The problem when you do a Gidd SSH push is that you're going to start as a process and you're going to shovel a lot of data at once. Depending on your connection speed, it may basically use all the available IOPS. That's how it looks like. The problem is that we don't know for sure that that's the case. We are using Prometheus to log that. The issue just with this is that Prometheus gives us the rate and the bandwidth used. We already have that, but we cannot identify which REPL with Prometheus, with the way it is. So it looks like we need something else there. I think I don't want to issue for that yesterday. We could basically go back to that one. Any more questions? Yes, Brian. Giddlapshell and Giddily. It's basically, I think that we're going to, in a short term, we're going to be replacing the kit part of Giddlapshell for a Giddily client. Maybe that's the place to do it. Okay. Have a great day. Oh, hold on, Jim. Yes, we're using Giddlapshell to manage Chef. We use the Dev environment for that. Just in case Giddlapshell comes down, we can still recover it with the Dev one. All kits basically. Okay. Have a great day, everyone. Bye.


Good evening my fellow Americans. I speak to you this evening about very important developments in our search for peace in Vietnam. On the final day in October 1968, President Johnson went on nationwide television to announce a breakthrough in the Paris peace talks that would signal a new phase in the quest for a peaceful settlement in Southeast Asia. Responding to a change in Hanoi's negotiating stance, the President, with the concurrence of his top level advisors, ordered a complete halt to all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam. This decision, the result of hard days and long nights of careful deliberation, constitutes one of the most intense and intricate chapters in American diplomatic history and was the pivotal concern during the 31 days of this drama-filled month. The month that would close with a major accomplishment began for President Johnson with a major setback. The Senate, in a President-setting filibuster, refused to consider the President's nomination of Associate Justice Abe Fortess to be Chief Justice of the United States. Back in June, when the President had announced that Chief Justice Warren was retiring, most observers expected swift approval for his nominations of Justice Fortess and Judge Homer Thornberry. But during the long summer, opposition to these appointments mounted on Capitol Hill. Senators who wanted to block the nominations charged cronyism and lame duck maneuvering. These, along with Republicans hopeful of naming their own Chief Justice after January, and conservatives uneasy over the many liberalizing decisions of the Warren Court, formed a coalition powerful enough to beat a motion for cloture on the five-day debate. At the request of Justice Fortess on October 2nd, President Johnson withdrew the nomination. At 10 a.m. on October 7th, the court began a new session, the 179th. Its membership remained unchanged. Earl Warren at the center and Justice Fortess to the right of his colleagues. However, not all congressional action in October was negative. A flurry of activity in the closing days of the session sent more than two dozen bills to the White House. This month, the President penned into law important new legislation in four diverse areas, conservation, education, consumer protection, and firearms control. Among the various conservation measures, the most significant was the 58,000 acre Redwood National Park Act. I believe that this act establishing the Redwood National Park in California will stand for all time as a monument to the wisdom of our generation. It will surely be remembered, I think, as one of the great conservation achievements of the 90th Congress. It is a great victory for every American in every state, because we have rescued a magnificent and a meaningful treasure from the chain saw. Yes, the Redwoods will stand. So long as they do, they will give delight. They will give instruction. They will declare for all to hear when other great conservation battles are being called. We stand because a nation found its greatest profit in preserving for its heritage, its greatest resource, and that is the beauty and the splendor of its land. The President returned to the East Room to sign with great pride two far-reaching education bills, the 59th and 60th of the Johnson administration. The higher education and vocational education amendments of 1968 were broad measures that extend existing education programs and create several new ones. I told myself when I became president in this office I wanted to do one thing and that was to advance education among all of my people. So here we are, 60 laws later. We can count the laws, but no one can count the lives that these laws have and will change. How many bright youngsters have been discovered inspired who might otherwise have been ignored? How many families have fulfilled the dream of college for their children? The answers to those questions I think explained to you why I feel as I do about education. At a cabinet room ceremony, the president signed the 20th consumer protection measure of his administration, the Hazardous Radiation Act. It establishes health and safety standards to protect the public from harmful radiation emissions of electronic products. The last significant measure the president signed into law in October was the Gun Control Act of 1968. A stronger bill than had been considered possible at the beginning of the year, it strengthened and extended to long guns and ammunition restrictions that had been placed on handguns by the previously passed Omnibus Crime Control Act. Coupled with the crime bill the Gun Control Act made 1968 the most important year for firearms legislation since 1938. The second session of the 90th Congress, the last under the Johnson administration, adjourned in mid-October. It had been marked by some clear victories for the president and some compromises. Congress had enacted a landmark housing bill, a strong civil rights act, an important truth in lending law, several major conservation measures and a number of health and education programs. It also passed the president's 10% surtax in exchange for a six billion dollar cut in federal spending and a sweeping crime bill with which the president had a few reservations. Something not accomplished this session which gave the president cause for concern was the ratification of a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Just before final adjournment the president made one last appeal urging Senate acceptance of this very important agreement. To see what further areas might need attention and to better evaluate what had already been accomplished, the president continued the policy begun in September of having cabinet members present summaries of the current status of their departments. This series of intense searching meetings concentrated on problems of the future to define issues and help the president shape his remaining decisions in office. Facing the president and several of his advisors this month were Secretary of the Interior Stuart Udall, Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, the Secretary of Transportation Alan Boyd, C.R. Smith, Secretary of Commerce, Orville Freeman, Secretary of Agriculture, Attorney General Ramsey Clark, and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Robert Weaver. Is there anything there that you can give me one, two, three things that you think is going to be the challenges of all this data? I'll say that the first one is the one I just alluded to and that is the matter of an urban land policy. The second big problem is going to be how we organize our local governmental units. When you get issues like air pollution, planning, and mass transportation you've got to have wide area wide government. How do we reconcile these two requirements? Because they're both pressing upon us. And of course there is also the problem which has been very, very pressing and which we have not been able to make much progress in despite what we've tried to do. And that is a problem of a category of trained people at every level of government. We just don't have enough bodies, Mr. President, to do the job that we're now doing and as we expand it it's going to get to be much, much more crucial and critical than it is today. There were two official state visits in October. Early in the month President Johnson welcomed President Francois Tambalbaier from Chad as a leader of courage and rare vision who has worked hard and long for peace on his continent. That evening a state dinner was held for President Tambalbaier in the White House. October 9th President Johnson greeted a trusted friend and ally in the struggle against aggression in Southeast Asia, Prime Minister Keith Holyoke of New Zealand. This visit would give President Johnson the chance to reciprocate the warm welcome he received in New Zealand two years before while en route to the Manila Summit Conference. The President took this occasion to restate America's purpose in Vietnam and to reaffirm the long-standing commitments to freedom in that troubled part of the globe. But even as the President spoke, dramatic new developments were unfolding at the Paris Peace Talks. On the very day of the Prime Minister's visit, North Vietnamese negotiators changed the course of the discussions and of history. After five months of skirting issues, the Communist representatives began asking direct questions concerning what steps could be taken to bring about a bombing halt. In his talks with the Prime Minister later in the day, President Johnson stressed the preconditions that had to be agreed upon before a bombing halt could begin. First and foremost, productive discussions could not take place without participation by the government of South Vietnam itself. Second, there had to be no violations by either side of the demilitarized zone. Last, there could be no more attacks on South Vietnam's cities or major population areas. This, in essence, was the San Antonio formula the President had stated one year earlier. These requirements were cabled to the American negotiators in Paris for relay to the North Vietnamese. Exactly what the Communist questioning signified at this stage was uncertain. Nevertheless, it was something. A beginning perhaps. That evening, President and Mrs. Johnson received the Holy Oaks prior to a state dinner given in their honor. There was a third visitor in October who received some headlines. It was a non-official visit, but one that had been expected for quite a while. Paying a call on the White House this month was the stork. He brought Lucinda Descheves, sleepy-eyed and with a yellow bow ribbon in her hair, to the home of her grandparents. But this home would be only a temporary one. The executive mansion was preparing itself for a new occupant. And in October, the seekers of this residence began heating up the presidential campaign as the contest neared the wire. Helping to keep a Democrat in the White House would be one reason President Johnson spoke out on several different occasions, for the man he felt best qualified to serve America. From what I have observed of Vice President Humphrey over more than 20 years, I believe that he has in a unique measure the understanding, the imagination, the commitment to freedom that this responsibility requires. In his first major political speech of the campaign, the president vigorously endorsed the Humphrey Muskie ticket over nationwide radio with a broadcast sponsored by the International Ladies Garmin Workers Union. A few days later, the president traveled to New York and the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria, where he was the surprise guest at a benefit dinner for the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation. Also present were the two major party candidates and the president in a light mood joked with Mr. Nixon and Vice President Humphrey for their endeavors to become a prisoner of the big white jailhouse. The president began a series of partisan speeches outside of Washington when he arrived at the Huntington West Virginia Airport on the way to a reservoir dedication. Here the president recalls some of the prominent achievements of his party and urged the audience to remember this progress on election day and vote Democratic. The president took a short hop to nearby Pikeville, Kentucky for the dedication of fish trap dam, a clear example of the prosperous and progressive spirit in this state today. Pointing to the regeneration of the entire Appalachian area, the president emphasized that it was a joint effort produced by Democrats working in concert. Together has been built on the enduring and honored principle of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is the party that acts on your problems instead of defers your problems and I want every one of you to remember that when you go to the poad on November the 4th and vote the straight Democratic ticket from the White House to the courthouse. The president continued his stump tour with a short speech at the Morgantown West Virginia Airport, then reiterated the theme of progress from Democrats working together at a dinner honoring Congressman Harley Staggers. The following day the president returned to New York for a luncheon of the All Americans Council of the Democratic National Committee. This time the president brought along a budding apprentice on the political scene. His grandson Patrick Lindon gained valuable training in such basic techniques as arm waving and hand shaking. On a serious note the president assailed the Republican Party for postponing solutions to America's problems. However the president was not the only member of the Johnson family who took to the campaign trail for Humphrey Muskie. In October the first lady traveled to Louisville to address a gathering of the Democratic Women's Clubs of Kentucky. In one of her most pointed political speeches of the year Mrs. Johnson praised Vice President Humphrey for being a strong and compassionate man of deep convictions. He is a builder, a unifier who does not try to set American against American. He does not panda to the fears and the souls of our people. He calls on the best that is in all of us. The effort he calls on the affirming spirit of hope. Accompanied by Mrs. Humphrey, Mrs. Johnson traveled to Philadelphia for an appearance on the Mike Douglas television show to boost the campaign of the first and second lady's favorite candidate. Mrs. Johnson gave a further endorsement to the vice president at a performance in Washington of Alexis We Love You. A musical fashion show put on by the Women's National Democratic Club. It featured clothing worn by White House occupants from the Johnson daughters back to the days of Dolly Madison. A democratic fall. Come on along, come on along and breathe for all. Everyone will be there, SBR and Diamond Tim. The Hogan's and the Brogan's and their even Tiny Tim. Al Smith will lead the big parade. Who puts a romance back in our life? Lucy. You make that man a wonderful white slender. This show was repeated later in the month at a benefit for the Humphrey Muskie campaign in Austin, where Mrs. Johnson introduced Mrs. Humphrey to the women of Texas. But the first lady's busy agenda was not limited to campaigning alone. There were a variety of White House social events in October, including a reception for officers of the future homemakers of America. A tea for wives and daughters of international bankers and a gathering of national women legislators. The first lady was also hostess to a restoration luncheon attended by a number of people active in historical preservation projects around the country. After the luncheon, specialists spoke on the importance of restoration projects in terms of the nation's forthcoming 200th birthday. On October 11th, President Johnson boarded Air Force One to visit another president who had faced communist intransigence at the bargaining table, Harry Truman. But on this day, the current peace talks took another optimistic turn. In Paris, the North Vietnamese asked whether a bombing halt would in fact follow their agreement to permit South Vietnam into the discussions. The American negotiators repeated that the DMZ had to be honored and that there could be no attacks on South Vietnam cities. Would the communists agree to this? No one knew. Arriving at the Truman home in Independence Missouri, the president signed two proclamations, one marking United Nations Day and the other praising the former president's pioneering support of the UN. To repeat, the ignition sequence will start at 8.9 seconds. We'll be looking to lift off at zero. In October, President Johnson, like millions of others, tuned in on the Apollo 7 space launch from Cape Kennedy. The drama of this attempt was heightened by the knowledge that it was America's first manned flight since the tragic death of three astronauts 21 months before. 12, 11, 10, 9. Ignition sequence starts. We have ignition. All engines are running. We have lift off. We have lift off. As the towering Saturn 1B rocket rose into the skies, America's hopes for placing men on the moon rose with it. To the president, who for many years had worked diligently to build and expand the nation's space potential, the successful launch of Apollo 7 was a moment of great pride and excitement. During the next 10 days, a portion of the world's consciousness centered on the orbiting module as it performed its assigned duties and a few additional ones, people the world over viewed the first live telecasts from outer space. They followed the progress of Coles, the three men developed, and sympathized with mounting complaints about space cuisine. Finally, after a textbook perfect mission that circled the globe 163 times in 264 hours, Apollo 7 re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. True to its performance in space, the unit splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean less than half a mile from the point it had aimed for. The unqualified success of this flight brought into the realm of very real possibility what once seemed like a far-out dream, placing an American on the moon before the end of this decade. When astronauts Shirar, Isley, and Cunningham were safely aboard the carrier Essex, President Johnson congratulated them on behalf of their countrymen. He also extended an invitation to receive the three at the LBJ Ranch. By the time the astronauts returned to Earth, the President's attention had already become almost exclusively engaged in what some observers would call the most concentrated diplomatic activity in the White House since the Cuban Missile Crisis. This activity, which would culminate on the final day in October, really began back in March. In the interest of peace and national unity, the President had decided to remove himself from the political arena and dedicate all of his energies to solving the Vietnam problem. At the same time, he ordered a partial cessation of the bombing with the hope that this gesture would lead to peace negotiations. It did. The President chose Abril Harriman and Cyrus Vance to head the American delegation. Paris was finally agreed on as the site. Here for the first time since the beginning of the war, United States and North Vietnamese representatives met in face-to-face discussions. But it soon became apparent that the communists were unwilling to address themselves to substantive matters. For all intents and purposes, the talks were deadlocked. This is what the U.S. negotiators reported to the President when back in Washington, the stalemate continued for five and a half months. Then suddenly the American persistence appeared to pay off. The change in bargaining at the October 9th and October 11th meetings in Paris had come at last. On October 14th, the President met with top-level advisors to contemplate the turn of events. Before them were cables from Ambassador Bunker and General Abrams in Saigon, which stated that in their opinion, Hanoi was ready for a tactical shift from the battlefield to the conference table. The President's advisors unanimously agreed that the questions asked in Paris should be interpreted as a change in North Vietnam's position and represented a serious move toward peace. The same day, the President polled members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on their attitude toward a bombing halt. Each man agreed that the risks of a bombing pause under the new conditions were low and from a military standpoint sustainable. From South Vietnam came President Tew's concurrence. The problem is not to stop the bombing, he said, but to stop the war. We must try this path to see if the enemy's intentions are serious. The President then directed that all country-supplying troops to Vietnam be consulted. Their responses fully supported the President's instructions to his Paris representatives. These countries favored a bombing halt if Hanoi would have sent to the three facts of life the President had established. Saigon at the bargaining table, no violations of the DMZ and no attacks on the cities. The groundwork had been laid and now the tension would begin. For there followed 13 days of on again off again uncertainty from Paris. Hanoi was bulking at several points. First they withheld their promise to meet promptly for talks after a bombing halt went into operation. Then they wanted the bombing halt labeled an unconditional stoppage. They also wanted the expanded discussions described as a full power conference which in effect was a demand for recognition of the Viet Cong's political arm, the National Liberation Front. While these points were being argued the President wanted more individual discussions with informed advisors. On October 23rd he called in General William Moemeyer, Chief of the Air Force Tactical Air Command and a former commander in Vietnam to investigate the problems involved in a bombing halt. At one point in the conference the President asked bluntly, if you were President what would you do? The General replied, in my judgment a bombing halt now would not involve a substantial risk. If it will help bring peace I am for it. Later that day the President met again with his Chief Foreign Policy Advisors. They went over reports from Saigon indicating that a slowdown in hostilities seemed to be occurring. American casualties during the previous week were the lowest in a number of months. But the President cautioned against the allies being lulled into a false sense of security. The way for Hanoi to show its good faith was at the bargaining table in serious discussions that included the government of South Vietnam. At a news conference on October 24th the President hinted that while no breakthrough had taken place he was encouraged by the direction activity on the diplomatic front had taken in recent weeks. We do not want to make news until there is news and we realize that many times diplomacy can be more effective in private than to have all your discussions and recommendations and prophecies carried in the press. Our position remains set forth by the President and Secretary of State and when there's anything to report or you'll be informed there's a correct one today. The next afternoon the President again conferred with close aides. This time the discussion centered around standing orders to be issued to General Abrams if North Vietnam violated the DMZ or attacked the major population areas after a bombing halt. General Maxwell Taylor stressed that when the President announces the bombing halt he must make it clear that this is just another step on the arduous road toward peace and is not peace itself. Secretary Rusk urged that the three presidential candidates who had been briefed previously be given word of the decision shortly before the public announcement. Here it was then agreed that the presidential contenders and the congressional leadership would be given separate briefings but still North Vietnam was holding out. Two weeks of exhaustive negotiating had produced no commitments. After all this would Hanoi back down? That uncomfortable thought became more of a possibility as the days wore on. Then on the afternoon of October 27th in the predictably unexpected fashion of historic events word came from Paris that Hanoi would accept the terms for a bombing halt. At last the breakthrough arrived. The long hours of patience and insistence had paid dividends. North Vietnam dropped its demand of a full power designation for the conference. The halt was not labeled unconditional and expanded talks on a your side our side basis would start as soon as the new delegations from Saigon and the NLF were assembled. Late into the night the president reviewed cables from Saigon and Paris. He already had the accord of his personal advisors the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all the allied countries. Yet before taking the final step he wanted to look his commanding general in the eye and ask if this decision would jeopardize the men in the field. At 2 30 a.m. on the morning of October 29th President Johnson summoned the top foreign policy advisors to the White House with his departure from Vietnam cloaked in secrecy to avoid premature speculation. General Abrams had arrived in Washington only moments before dressed in civilian clothes. The president began quizzing his field commander immediately. General Abrams reported that critical changes in the military situation had recently taken place. Heavy defeats were imposed on the communists. The strengthened allies had forced many enemy units to withdraw above the DMZ or into Laos and Cambodia and the monsoon weather had begun limiting the flow of men and supplies into the south. On hearing this information the president turned to General Abrams and asked can we proceed with a bombing halt without taking additional casualties. Yes sir the general replied in my opinion we can. Then the president put the same question to General Abrams he had asked General Momeyer six days earlier. If you were president what would you do while the others at the table listened intently. The general answered Mr. President I am really no judge of your responsibilities in that office but I can say that I have absolutely no reservations about doing this. I think the war is at the stage where it is the right and proper thing to do and so the president had the answer he had been seeking but there still was a great deal left to be done. While he awaited confirmation of a joint announcement from Saigon the president set in motion action to inform the nation and the world of the decision. General Abrams rested in a guest room of the executive mansion as the president and several aides began working on the first drafts of the speech. By now however rumblings of discontent from south Vietnam over the arrangements in Paris had come in. Returning to the cabinet room which he had left only an hour before the president continued dictating portions of the text but the other affairs of state still had to be attended to and the president signed a few minor bills and letters before reopening further discussions with his consultants. Outside Don was just breaking over the nation's capital. It had been a long night for president Johnson. He had gotten practically no sleep but sleep was the least concern of those involved in this momentous decision. The president ordered breakfast for the second meeting which would cover the difficult problems of timing the announcement and informing America's allies. After the second cabinet room meeting ended the president returned to the executive mansion where he caught up on developments elsewhere in the world. A short time later he rejoined general Abrams and other advisors in the West Hall sitting room where the latest intelligence data from Vietnam was reviewed. This evidence reinforced the president's decision for a bombing halt. It was now time for general Abrams to return to his command but before he did the president took him aside and presented him the distinguished service medal. By the following morning Saigon's dissatisfaction had been established. Fearful that the outcome would be a coalition government including the communists president Tew was now unwilling to send a delegation to Paris. The president instructed American ambassador Bunker to present the Saigon government with a concise picture of what the allies were receiving in return for the bombing halt Tew had previously supported emphasizing that the United States was committed to going through with its agreements. In his office the president continued work on the speech with private secretary Marie Famer special assistant Harry McPherson and press secretary George Christian. Each sentence each phrase each word had to be precise and to the point the reasons for the decision unmistakably clear. Late in the day the president again met with advisors to go over the final draft of the speech. The president continued polishing and repolishing this last version right up until the time it was recorded on film for a delayed broadcast. On October 31st American ambassadors informed the troop contributing countries on the text of the president's announcement. It remained now for president Johnson to notify the major presidential contenders that the decision had been made. Using the White House speakerphone the president talked simultaneously to Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace. The three candidates told the president that they would back his decision. General Wheeler then called the Pentagon to relay orders of the bombing halt to American command centers in the Pacific. Back in the cabinet room president Johnson met with the national security council. The service secretaries and other foreign policy advisors just before the speech was to be aired. Each man in the room voiced his support of the decision. Thinking pressures for the moment had somewhat eased the president was a bit surprised to find a young halloweener in his outer office demanding trick or treat. The rest of the first family joined the president as the nationwide broadcast was about to start. Meanwhile special presidential assistant Walt Rostow briefed members of the press on the contents of the speech and a background of events that led up to the decision. At last after three weeks of endless consultations and seesawing diplomatic intrigues the moment for the announcement had come. Good evening my fellow Americans. I speak to you this evening about very important developments in our search for peace in Vietnam. When our representatives Ambassador Harriman and Ambassador Vance were sent to Paris they were instructed to insist throughout the discussion that the legitimate elected government of South Vietnam must take its place in any serious negotiations affecting the future of South Vietnam. Therefore our ambassadors Harriman and Vance made it abundantly clear to the representatives of North Vietnam in the beginning that as I had indicated on the evening of March 31st we would stop the bombing of North Vietnamese territory entirely when that would lead to prompt and productive talks. For a good many weeks there was no movement in the talks at all. The talks appeared to really be deadlocked. Then a few weeks ago they entered a new and a very much more hopeful phase. Last Sunday evening and throughout Monday we began to get confirmation of the essential understanding that we had been seeking with the North Vietnamese on the critical issues between us for some time. Now as a result of all of these developments I have now ordered that all air naval and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam cease as of 8 a.m. Washington time Friday morning. I have reached this decision on the basis of the developments in the Paris talks and I've reached it in the belief that this action can lead to progress toward a peaceful settlement of the Vietnamese war. And so the decision had been announced to the world. Soon the long days and hard months of even tougher negotiating would begin.