NETWORLD+INTEROP DUMPS CONCEPT OF FLASHY SHOW NETWORK

FEATURES AND COMMENTARY

  Las Vegas, NV -- As Tim Greene reported for IDG, When the network
industry's masses arrive in Las Vegas for NetWorld+Interop 99, one of the
exhibition's stand-bys in previous years -- a show network running on the
latest and greatest leading-edge technology -- will not be there waiting for
them.



  Standing in its stead will be two networks: InteropNet, a live production
network built around more stable technology, and InteropNet Labs, a separate
net for controlled demonstrations and lectures about technologies deemed not
ready for prime time.



  In years gone by, the Interop network was always a sort of showcase --
carrying real traffic among hundreds of exhibitor booths and out to the
Internet. People attending the show got the chance to see the most talked
about new technologies work -- or not work as the case sometimes was -- in
an environment similar to that of a corporate network. Not anymore, say
longtime volunteers in the show's network operations center (NOC).



  "InteropNet is no longer really demonstrating anything," says Tripp
Lilley, who is a NOC member in charge of addressing. "It used to demonstrate
interoperability, both in the sense of vendors interoperating and in the
sense of technologies interoperating - the old with the new."



  Historically, the show network has been IP-based and has employed the most
advanced switching and routing technology available. One year the underlying
transport was ATM, another FDDI. This year Gigabit Ethernet is the
technology of choice.



  For this show however, all of the hottest technology -- dense wave
division multiplexing, Gigabit Ethernet over copper, voice over IP, virtual
private networks -- will be segregated to the InteropNet Labs network.



  InteropNet, the network that exhibitors will actually use, is based on
off-the-shelf Cisco hardware supported by management, firewall and intrusion
detection products supplied by eight other vendors: Check Point, Computer
Associates, Fluke, Hewlett-Packard, Liebert, Novell, Shomiti and Qwest.



  Detractors believe the dual network scheme can't prove the latest
equipment actually works in a live network the way former InteropNets did.



  Show organizers disagree, stating that the network split gives attendees a
better chance to learn hands-on about the latest hardware and software.
Because the gear won't be tied up running real traffic, people will have the
chance to tinker with it.



  "Attendees can interact with technologies and interact with engineers who
work on them," says Steve Wiley, director of network operations for ZD
Events, which runs the show. Before, those engineers were too busy running
InteropNet to talk.



  But a test environment can't provide as thorough a workout as a live
production network, says Steve Hultquist, a veteran of 15 InteropNets. Once
gear is in a real-world net, people put demands on equipment that engineers
never thought of, he says.



  "The old tag line was: I know it works, I saw it at Interop," Hultquist
says. "Now you won't know it works. It's not real if it's in the labs. And
if it's in the production network, well of course it works; it's [primarily]
one vendor's stuff."



  Even show literature acknowledges that InteropNet Labs is less challenging
than the old InteropNet. The show Web site describes the lab as a place
"where truly bleeding-edge technologies can be tested and proven without the
constraint of being required to work."



  In the past, vendors who put their gear through the rigors of InteropNet
hastily fixed flaws and weaknesses that InteropNet exposed, speeding the
rate at which the technology matured.



  "I grieve, both personally and professionally. You've lost a window into
an admittedly strange but telling reality," Lilley says.