Inside Interop 2011 Hot Stage

By Mike Fratto 05/09/2011 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.

The hot stage is when all of the planning comes together. The InteropNet team documents every detail, down to where patch cords are connecting, ensuring that when the equipment is moved to the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, it can be rolled to position, connected, and powered on in preparation for the exhibitors showing up and the show starting.

After the equipment is moved to the convention center, engineers check the equipment, reseating cables that might have come loose and fixing any problems that occurred. Much of the work after that involves running the network, including getting exhibitors connected and resolving any issues they may have.

Eningeers Prepare Equipment

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.