Ever had a lousy WiFi network at a conference? You don’t at IETF…
March 9th, 2008 by Dan YorkHow many conferences have you attended where the WiFi network - if there even is one - has been really poor? Or charged you an arm and a leg to use it?
That doesn’t happen at IETF meetings… bandwidth is usually decent and accessible in in all meeting rooms and common areas - at no charge to meeting attendees. Why? Because the IETF brings in its own network!
Indeed, there’s even a document on “Meeting Network Requirements” which spells out how to arrange such a network. Here’s the abstract:
The IETF Meeting Network has become integral to the success of any IETF meeting. Building such a network, which provides service to thousands of heavy users, spread throughout the event venue, with very little time for setup and testing is a dramatic challenge. This document provides a set of requirements, derived from hard won experience, as an aid to anyone involved in designing and deploying future networks.
If only other conferences could have a network like this!
P.S. Here’s a piece in the Philadelphia Business Journal that goes into this: “1,500-strong laptop invasion to hit Marriott for Net task force” (hat tip to Comcast’s IETF71 blog).
Technorati Tags:
ietf, conferences, wifi
Tags: Conferences, IETF
RSS Feed
March 10th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
FYI…the real secret as to why the WiFi network works so robustly at IETF meetings is because a company named VeriLAN Event Services, based in Portland, builds and manages the network for IETF! They are the real experts on WiFi networks; this is validated by the fact that they are contracted by the most demanding groups in the world to deliver great wireless networks for meetings and events all over the planet, e.g. IETF, IEEE 802, ICANN, WiMAX, ZigBee, DSL Forum, ISOC, WiMEDIA, SD Card, MEF, OIF, MAAWG, etc. etc. They are everywhere!
March 14th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Indeed VeriLAN did an outstanding job with the network at IETF 71! Thanks for pointing to them specifically.