Interop's Hot Stage is a grueling two-week exercise where best practice meets rapid deployment in setting up and optimizing the InteropNet equipment before it's disassembled and shipped out to the show site in Las Vegas. For two weeks, the elite of IT will gather at a stuffy warehouse to design, build, and test the largest temporary network in the world with the latest and greatest IT gear from around the industry. The event is always a major undertaking, but Geoff Horne and Val Bojarski, the folks running Hot Stage, make it look easy. Of course, they have enormous help from the Interop NOC team and staff from InteropNet sponsors.

NOC engineers are preparing the equipment for Interop. In the foreground, engineers from Cisco and Gigamon are discussing wireless monitoring options while, further back, engineers from HP are laying out their portion of the network.

For the latest news and commentary from the show, go to the Interop Special Report.