Inside Interop 2011 Hot Stage

Three months of planning the Interop network. Two weeks staging the equipment and preparing the network. Dozens of people from as many vendors all focused on putting together a network that will go live for six days. Glenn Evans, Interop network project lead and benevolent dictator, works with the vendors and volunteers to design, build, troubleshoot, and manage the InteropNet. <br><br>

Mike Fratto, Former Network Computing Editor

May 6, 2011

11 Slides
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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.

About the Author

Mike Fratto

Former Network Computing Editor

Mike Fratto is a principal analyst at Current Analysis, covering the Enterprise Networking and Data Center Technology markets. Prior to that, Mike was with UBM Tech for 15 years, and served as editor of Network Computing. He was also lead analyst for InformationWeek Analytics and executive editor for Secure Enterprise. He has spoken at several conferences including Interop, MISTI, the Internet Security Conference, as well as to local groups. He served as the chair for Interop's datacenter and storage tracks. He also teaches a network security graduate course at Syracuse University. Prior to Network Computing, Mike was an independent consultant.

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