05-05-05

In an effort to get this out before our connectivity disappears, I'll endeavor to put this in early today. You may be interested to know that a link to this blog will appear on the corporate Interop site (if it has not done already). I find that quite cool, but if you're concerned about anything written here as a result of that, please let me know...

This, apparently, is our last first show (I am not clear at this point whether that's "last" as in final or "last" as in most recent). A number of folks have said so. Furthermore, Glenn said something last night about managing to do some things in the design to make life harder on themselves. I don't know about that. I don't think the eNet really had very much going on. At least, not so anyone has mentioned it. Apparently, their biggest worry was which shirt to wear...

Today, in the event you haven't noticed, is 05/05/05 (regardless of where in the world you are, that's the 5th of May, 2005). Pretty cool. At 05:05 05/05/05 UTC, we were had just left the Hookah Lounge where we had enjoyed the Volunteer Appreciation dinner. The dinner was quite nice, with an open bar since the food was so reasonably priced. The food was surved buffet-style, and those who are familiar with the cuisine considered it quite a reasonable menu. A number of team members enjoyed Hookahs after the dinner was over, although Alice complained that it wasn't even really smoking (too smooth, apparently).

Quotes of the day:

"Whatever it is you are going to do..." "...Just don't!"

"That's not five 9s. More like nine 5s."

When I walked into the fishbowl earlier today, Brett was chatting with Jim together with a young lady. I came up behind them, sat down, and then gave the lady a light tickle. "Oops... that's not TJ!"

I had just managed to goose Brett's wife, who I had yet to meet!

This led to a conversation with Karen during which she described an experience from an earlier show. Seems that she was walking across the floor when suddenly and without warning, an attendee gave her a resounding smack on the backside! She didn't even attempt to describe the looks on his face when she turned around and he discovered that she was not who he thought she was...!

It's been a good show. For those of you who have not heard, yet, we'll be in New York City (at the Javits) a couple of weeks before Christmas, and there will be iLabs there (although the details are still evolving). In the meantime, we'll try to keep this blog moving every once in a while (especially during Hot Stage). Keep those cards and letters coming, and I'll add to this as it seems appropriate.

God bless Ron Jarrell...

Good night, Gracie...

Fun Things...

So I learned of an easter egg last night that involves a long-time NOC team member. But, in true marketing form, you'll have to wait until sometime later in this note for that information.

Earlier this week, I was amazed to come around the corner in the access hallway and come face-to-face with a cart pulling food racks, each about twice the lenth of one of our racks. Ten of them. Like a train. Furthermore, the racks were tied together as a train using trash bags. The "caboose" looked a little precarious and they were just getting started. I almost followed them to see how long it took for everything to slide off.

You that know Allen would appreciate this. After a relatively short conversation in the SpyWare (oops... I mean WeatherBug) booth, the booth people were told that he works for the Cox School of Business at SMU. Their response? "They let you near children?"

This morning I learned something new about long-time NOC team member Karl A. Allen mentioned that he was planning to change his name to "CLEC" (Karl himself later correct me and told me that it was actually "ILEC"). Seems that it's currently RBOC...

Now for the Easter Egg... This one is from Fluke:

Go to www.flukenetworks.com. Who is that in that picture!?

Now click on Knowledge Base and in the search box type "geek". Select the
only result. Look familiar?

Today, we had people wandering into the fishbowl here at the iLabs. Never mind the two huge signs proclaiming the need for NOC credentials. Never mind that I asked if I could help him. His response? "No..." and he keeps wandering around. After persistent questioning, it turns out that he was looking for the NOC tour. Which doesn't even start here!

The quote of the day goes to Will as he was desperately trying to find someone to eat lunch with him: "You're three times my size, man, how can you survive on an apple?!"

God bless Ron Jarrell...

Good night, Gracie...

"Tank, I need an exit"

ssh has agreed to let me be a guest editor for the interop universe. I noticed that the notes were a lacking the point of view from some of the NOCers on the eNet side. So I'm here to offer first hand information.

Of course, while trying to document all this I kept getting segwayed onto some of our other traits - namely the efforts we make to find out what bar everyone is at.

Interesting, it is a routing problem. Being, as we are, at the Mandalay Bay, All the bars we used end the night with (Rum Jungle, Red Square) are now the ones we're starting at. So we have this Blackhole route to the Rum Jungle, but after a few days this tends to wear thin and most of us end up looking a better routing table.

So we all get on the phone and start kicking around where we are and what our next hop is, hopefully in an effort to reach convergence. Last night we probably spent more time sending SMS routes than actually talking.

We were at the House of Blues and needed a default out of the Mandalay, Wej and the cheesheads were at the the Luxor and headed to the Hard rock. and Wally was on hold in the Monte Carlo also waiting for a route. It is like we need a drinkers BGP.

Fortunately, one exists. What we need to do is just all register ourselves with the Vegas version of DodgeBall.com.

I always recall that this was a lot easier when we were at the LVCC. We just got the hell out and hit a bar. I'm not sure if our proximity to the Rum Jungle makes this harder or it was just that that the LVCC sucked so bad we had to get down the strip.

Whatever protocol we use, I think that we need to keep a few bottles of vodka and bloody mary mix in the volunteer lounge. I think our mornings would be a lot more tolerable

But back to the eNet.

We were in the daily meeting. It had been a particularly bad day, where we saw some of the most exceptional network outages and weirdness. It was one of those days where everyone managed to screw up something and trouble shooting was, well, why we are here.

Glenn calmly summarised the state of affairs by simply saying "Today we were were our own worst enemy", and reminded us all of a saying that came about a few years ago: I was bitching an whining to someone that as usual we had screwed everything up. I was trying to find a simple way to get this point across,

"Whatever it is you are going to do...

When one of the volunteers finished my sentence for me

"...Just Don't !"

I'm not sure if we have a short term memory issue, or there is some deeper sub-conscious action that ensures we always have a problem to solve.

Either way, each show the Spirent guys take the time to point out that the network has the best performance between midnight and 6am

On my way back to my room I saw an elderly person with an oxygen tank playing the slots. Around the corner was a guy in a wheelchair at the craps table.

You're never too sick to go to Vegas.

Ssh, someone is sleeping.

Good night, Gracie

Thanks to Ron Jarrel

Surprises?

It's no surprise to anyone that the reason that I'm here again this year is the people. Furthermore, for me, at least, it's the dynamics of a group of amazing people making use of aggressive intelligence to accomplish new things. This year is no exception, of course.

For example, I've noticed that this year in the iLabs, most of the groups quit early and arrive late, showing their deep commitment to their areas. I'm sure that part of their reason for departing is to carry on in-depth discussions well into the night, undoubtedly over obscene amounts of alcohol. In the old days, we measured the network deployment in pizzas and beer. I think now it's measured in box lunches and Aquavit. Or something like that.

My personal quote of the show (so far) goes to Karen talking directly to me (in a way that only she can, especially since she's sitting right across from me at the same table and was looking--well, you know...): "Don't laugh, there's still a bunch of stuff you haven't finished." Given the state of the various papers that we've been collecting, Geoff suggested that they are actually gray papers, and we shouldn't worry about them too much. White papers are apprently those printed on glossy stock, but you've had that part of the story, already.

Last night, given that we finally had a collection of white papers worthy of being published, three of the FSS team went to Kinko's for the annual marathon. I begged off and went to bed. It was after midnight, but they were up until after 2am. At a copy place. Yow!

We learned yesterday that Alex can't make it this year. We'll miss him, and we've been reminded of other past-noc folks at times this year. For me, Tripp is among those that most often emerges from the memory, especially as there are a number of young and maleable members of the teams this time around. Today, out of the crowd, came Cyndi! She's here as a member of the Motorola staff, having moved there when they bought the router product line from 3Com. She's been working with the routing products specifically on the multicast side as Motorola has deployed them into radio networks, but now they are here to see what's happening in the datacomm world, again.

Last night, while walking across the show floor (after silence had decended following the exodus of the forklifts and the roll of the carpet), I noticed a very unusual-looking booth. On closer inspection, it was a booth that had the center structure fall over! Cables were all that was holding it up. It was the third booth I had seen that had fallen, but the largest one. In this case, it was Funk's, so we called Funk contacts that we had and suggested they might want to come over sooner rather than later. They did, and we ended up helping them get the tower corrected. Hmmm... Seems we've done this before...

Geoff has made an interesting observation. He suggests that our fridge has become "frat boy fridge" given that this morning at 9am the only thing in it was beer. Furthermore, it seems that there is always someone in the Ron Pashby position on the couches in the lounge area. As a result, there really is a frat feel to it. The partially emptied Aquavit bottle contributes, of course.

Some parties begin tonight, with the 5pm Funk party leading the card. Tomorrow night is the Appreciation dinner. We're one day in, and there are no fires, no rumblings at Net Serv (which is right across the aisle from us here at the iLabs), everything seems smooth. BTW, the only person I've identified at the NetServ booth--on the outside for a change--was Sean! He was complaining about bridge loops. Not a surprise, either, eh?

God bless Ron Jarrell...

Good night, Gracie...

Some Things Never Change

You remember how the "security" people would occasionally fall asleep in previous years? I am trying to figure out why they are being paid this year. They're the same company as previous years ("Pro-tect"). I noticed early on that they seemed to be less attentive than even the weak effort from prior years. But now, twice, I have walked past "faux guards" who are clearly reading some of the great works of literature, because they don't even look up! Of course, only one of them was at the NOC. I presume that someone is paying for this company to provide something. I can't imagine that the provision of bodies in chairs has great use. But, someone is paying (probably an exhorbitant amount) for these folks to be here and as far as I can tell, the payor is paying for them to read. And sleep...

Similarly, some of the iLabs have once again installed cameras at least partially to solve the "who is surfing porn on that computer" question. Seems that "free" Internet access is too much to resist for many of the convention workers...

Interestingly, and one can only hope purposely, the cover of Linux Journal is completely appropriate for the show. On the cover is a belly dancer to headline an article about the use of Linux by performers. She looks amazingly like the one at the appreciation dinner a few years ago...

This year, in an effort to secure the NOC network, Alice pushed for 802.1x on it. Of course, as has happened in the past, there was an easy technology scapegoat. Whenever something went wrong in the NOC network, the complaint about 802.1x would raise to the ceiling (if there was one, anyway), and they'd shut it off. That didn't fix anything, but it apparently made people feel better. After that, they managed to find their bridge loops (multiple times, including at least a couple to Access Ether) or whatever else was wrong.

Which reminds me...

It seems that one of the InteropNet contributors has a great little proxy device that can scan one's inbound traffic to keep it clean of viruses, etc. So, they put it into the Internet path for the entire show (as I understand it). Up and down, up and down went out Internet access here in the iLabs. It didn't take long for Bert to give up and give us all access to his Squid proxy. Brandon has asked us to try it, again, so I think it's back in the circuit. So far, so good.

I did have a problem earlier that Brandon thought may be the iLabs firewall. I made some changes and still had the problem. Fabio claimed that it could not possibly be the iLabs firewall. When I gave him "that look", he said, "It can't possibly be the iLabs firewall since the iLabs firewall is now a crossover cable!" Sheepishly, I took the remiediation action I should have taken at the first sign. After a reboot (aka Redmond reset), it worked fine. Oops.

As mentioned, the OSS team has managed to consume an obscene amount of Aquavit, so far entirely in small "airline-sized" bottles. Yesterday, Karen pulled a huge bottle from one of her crash boxes and took it to them. I can't tell, yet, whether or not it's been consumed... Stay tuned...

In a sickening example of over-planning by iLabs, the SIP white papers all arrived yesterday, nicely stacked in boxes and printed on glossy paper stock. Furthermore, the OSS (Open Systems Software; I think they did that because they didn't want to be the OSI--Open Systems Initiative) have already got their printed marketing signs posted in their racks to take up all that open space. Rumor has it that they've got open software provisioning a Windows client. Or something like that. I may have it wrong... And there is no truth to the rumor that we're not even done with our white papers and presentation. Really. OK, I'm lying.

This morning, I decided that I'd register on my way in. Let me put it this way: if everyone takes as long as I did, the number of registered attendees will be in the hundreds! Hopefully, I was a good practice for the nice ladies that handled my registration and they'll actually search the database next time...

God bless Ron Jarrell...

Good night, Gracie...

This is Too Easy

I am sure that someone is facing a new challenge in putting together the network and demonstrations for the show, but I've not actually heard any examples. Instead, the SIP team and some others are going to see "We Will Rock You" tonight, I suspect that the OpenSource team will probably find something to keep them busy, again, and the FSS team is dwindling already.

We did catch Fabio (that's Chris Stradtman, in case you're wondering) trying to pull a TNEFKAS (Chris Liljenstolpe) and using a chair as a ladder. Fortunately, it wasn't a desk chair with castors, so he managed to survive it. He was trying to push cable down the conduit, however, until he was encouraged to get a fish tape. He snagged one from EDLEN (I still think of the old line editor every time I see that), and Brett helped him actually pull the cable through. Until he pulled too hard and lost it. They did eventually get it done...

Unfortunately. Since it's for a multi-directional video feed that's pointing into the iLabs fishbowl (from inside). I don't know if it'll be accessible from outside, but, if so, I'll post it here. You'll be able to stare at the SIP table, and perhaps some of the FSS table.

Trying to be a fly on the wall while also getting stuff done has been a bit of a challenge. I don't know how Ron did it all those shows. But, to get around that, I'm just not doing very much. I am getting some help, though, which is great. Here are the quotes of the day:

Nothing's wrong with the network. I'm just incredibly stupid.
I'm an idiot
It's not supposed to be a production network, yet.
I've started my white paper... I think it's still called 'document1'.
They don't have any exhibitors to test against, so they use us, instead.
They should be paying us to take them!
No! No, no, no, no! (Craig, responding to Karen's n-th Diet Coke of the day)
"We'll just use Starbucks only misspell it." "Don't use an 'F', just don't use an 'F'! (Alice/ssh)
It's time to kick everybody out of here! Time to go &$#% up the network!
External is down. Again!

Today we spotted Allen Gwinn toting a ladder into the iLabs. Allen Gwinn with a ladder? In the iLabs. Without a Sharpie... But, with a camera...

Of course, Geoff was hit on the head by some Norwegian alcohol. He claims someone threw it. I think it was just on top of the 'fridge when he grabbed something. But, that stuff seems to have a bit of a life of its own. Perhaps Geoff did something. He is on the OpenSystem team...

Karl Auerbach showed up today, too, and has Maxwell stuffed into the SIP network. I guess they really do want to try to test some things. Karl is making some inquiries into Fabio's embedded platform. Wouldn't it be fun with Watson on it?

God bless Ron Jarrell...

Good night, Gracie...

Hello? Hello?

Some number of years ago, I sat in a now-classic Interop panel on X.400. Marshall Rose was expressing his disdain for X.400 with this classic line: "Ring, ring, my phone is ringing. Who is it? An X.400 user, since they can't communicate with my X.400 system!"

Here, after ridiculing Karen last year for doing interoperability testing of WPA, Joel, Craig, Jim, and the rest of the SIP crew are doing interoperability testing of SIP. The area sounds like a stereotypical Verizon ad:

"They can't call each other, so we won't demo that."
"Why is that one ringing?"
"Do any of the SIPX systems actually work?"
"What are you guys doing?" "Making things work!"
"It doesn't, and I don't know what it did, so that's why I'm trying..."

I pretty much figure it will be a miracle if anything works. But, we've always been in the business of delivering miracles. Why not do it again?

Not to be outdone, Karen has decided that we'll do some interoperability testing, too. I think she was shamed into it. We're not going to organize it, though, rather facilitate what the vendors would like to try.

We're pretty excited that one of the key developers for Radiator has flown in from Australia to be with us. Other key participants are showing up, as well, which is very cool. Hege's team is full of interesting activities, including hacking into the sheep shank this afternoon during their team meeting (somehow, wej ended up in the very middle of that group. Imagine that...).

Poor Matthew. Seems he was pretty exhausted. You have to be careful around here when you do that! Of course, when you take pictures like that, you have to be expecting retaliation.

The SIP guys realized some time ago that they needed a "cheesy" demo, what Carig discussed as, "Call this number to make the monkey climb the rope." As a result, they have a couple of demos that actually were tough to do and took some development or other extensive work. They have a BetaBright this year, encouraging folks to call an 888 number to learn some number of words that their phone number spells. They won't send supervision, so mobile phone users won't even be charged airtime for it. Furthermore, calling a specific number in the SIP area will make Elvis dance.

This year, catering is rumored to be significantly more expensive than in the LVCC, with the micro-sodas (10oz) rumors to cost $4.50. Gulp, gulp, gulp, there goes $9...

Karen is dealing out wireless cards like the dealers at the 21 tables. Rodney is asking for anything that's not a Cisco, while others are just looking for something that they can get to work. Chris has managed to visit Frys at nearly all of the locations they have since the start of Hot Stage and to buy some wireless product each time. As a result, he has to dig to find anything...

God bless Ron Jarrell.

Good night, Gracie...

Coming together

More folks are arriving, and we expect many of the vendor staff for the FSS iLab to show up today. The iLabs are pretty much built, with the teams working on testing (SIP) and configuration (OpenSource) and scenarios (FSS). wej still hasn't managed to fill the four racks that the OpenSource iLab has. In fact, looking at those racks from where I sit, the 1U servers only occupy about 40% of the space in the racks. So, wej will do what he always does: fill the extra space with marketing by using signs to fill it.

I suggested the prop electronics that they use in furniture stores...

He mentioned that, had he had a few more weeks, he would have had an IBM mainframe running Linux in the mix. But, alas, no.

Karen has finally decided to join us. The advantages of leadership--you just wait until all the heavy lifting is done, and then show up. Of course, it's taking her almost an hour just to unpack her stuff. Something about a meeting she had to attend...

Which brings up Tripp. Apparently, Karen's first iLabs lead position involved Tripp. He arrived, as was his habit, with everything that he owned. Something about a network for IETF or something. Anyway, he proceeded to stack his junk on his table to the point that Karen was sure that it would fall any minute. On her. It's scarred her for life. She now needs to be away from the walls and in an open part of the room. We're helping her, of course.

Today, when we arrived at the iLabs, the Norwegians had left a shrine on their table. There's a lamb leg there surrounded by various Norwegian alcoholic beverages in a ceremonial circle. Our Champion supervisor has contributed a bumper sticker: "I'm not an alcoholic. I'm a DRUNK. Alcoholics go to meetings." Is Interop a meeting?

My real question is what's wrong? We had Internet connectivity yesterday morning! We had power and cabling. All we had to do was unpack and plug in!

Chris Stradtman and the riggers came up with a great new method for guiding cable around the iLabs. Instead of the painful rigging of the trusses, the riggers hung pipe from the ceiling as conduit. The cabling goes through the pipe and into the racks or trays around the iLabs room. The rigging can also provide a dressing cable for the drops. No more trussing to trip over, the cabling is clean, and it was fast and simple to go up (took about 10 minutes for all three of them). Brilliant!

Neal has suggested that I need to get more details about Chris' embedded platform. Rumor has it he's running BGP, OSPF, and other "interesting" things on them. I'll see what I can find out...

God bless Ron Jarrell.

Good night, Gracie,
ssh

Back to the Future

So, it's Interop, again!

We're here at a new venue with the old name, building the eNet and iLabs as two effectively completely separate teams. As last time I wrote the Notes, I am a member of the iLabs teams, this time helping Karen, Bert, and the rest of the Full Spectrum Security iLab. We also have an iLab devoted to SIP and another devoted to Open Source.

Now, you need to know that the latter includes the hardware whore himself (yes, wej is here) and there are rumors that they are looking for an IBM mainframe to run Linux. The issue seems to be that they're not sure how to get sufficient plumbing into the iLabs area to cool one of the water cooled beasts...

I arrived yesterday, as did Bert. I had dinner and pretty much called it a night. He came over here to the Mandalay Bay Convention Center (the new venue) and got the racks lit and a lot of the work done before the rest of us arrived. Now, team members are arriving, and most of team will be here by late today. So far, it's the usual string the cable, unpack the crates, unpack the systems, drill holes for cables, get the KVMs working, and so on. Bert gave me the tough job first thing: make What's Up Gold work as a web server. So, I checked the check box and was ready to go...

...except for the other web servers on that system, the rediculous "Enhanced Security" of Windows Server 2003 (reminicent of other "Enhanced" items from previous shows--pure swill), and so on. I did eventually get it done, but my comment that it only took a second wasn't quite accurate...

Over lunch today, we discussed running all kinds of interesting services on the LinkSys APs running OpenWRT. Chris S. has them all over doing various embedded application tasks (many without any wireless turned on). As he puts it, where else can you get an embedded processor for $50? He's also got a little SMB file server, but it's in his room. We also discussed a NetBSD system that's got an uptime of 7 years, as well as the challenge of eating on the per diem that we have (last night, eating alone at a basic restaurant at the Luxor, I paid $60!). The good news is that folks will be able to eat where they'd like.

...I'll miss the food from '03!

Please use the comments here to ask questions, make suggestions, or anything else you'd like me to try to do. Keep it clean!

--

God bless Ron Jarrell.

Good night, Gracie,
ssh