Security

Interop New York 2006 showed off advances in VoIP, security, and wireless

By // October 17, 2006, 2:24 AM PST // jasonhiner

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  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Registration for Interop New York 2006 was in the immense "Crystal Palace" of the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.

    The difference between Interop and other IT conferences is that Interop not only talks about the latest technology but puts it to use for attendees to get their hands on in the InteropNet. Take a look at the InteropNet and learn about the products that attendees were buzzing about at this year's fall Interop event in New York.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    New York's Javits Center, located just west of Midtown Manhattan, served as the site of the fall Interop for the second straight year. Interop officials said that they plan to make New York the regular location for the fall event.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    The Javits Center has gone hi-tech itself with a massive flatscreen that continually runs CNBC.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Here's the view looking out of the front of the Javits Center toward the Manhattan skyline.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    The entrance to the exhibit hall had a huge Avaya banner above it, which was appropriate because VoIP was a major topic of the conference and there was a lot of buzz about how clear the new Avaya VoIP phones were.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    A shot of the show floor.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Here's another shot of the show floor. At the back of the shot you can see "NOC #1" where the main InteropNet lab was stationed in the middle of the show floor.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    On the left you can see the list of vendors that are used to run a "real world" network in the InteropNet. On the right is a diagram and a list of vendors and IT pros that collaborated to build a Network Access Control demonstration (and instruction), which was also a major focus of the conference.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    NOC #2, which was located across the show floor from NOC #1, was set up to emulate a branch office. And in front of NOC #2 was where the lab demonstration of Network Access Control was set up, using solutions from Microsoft, Cisco, and an open source option from TCG.

    Credit: Interop (CMP Media LLC)

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    These are the racks that made up the heart of the InteropNet network in NOC #1.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    At the bottom of the first rack was this little unit that drew a lot of attention. It looks really cool but it's actually just a couple of RAID storage boxes.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    The InteropNet was staffed by volunteers from various vendors and organizations. Here, one of the voluneers, Robert "Padre" Ballecer, leads the InteropNet Tour by showing one of the cabling racks that was used to connect vendor booths to the InteropNet. I'm the guy in the blue suit with his head cocked to the side trying to look smart.

    Credit: Interop (CMP Media LLC)

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    You can see by this cable waterfall to the rack that Padre was showing us that this is a serious network and not just a small-scale demo.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Padre showed us NOC #2 and the Network Access Control lab. He pointed inside the glass and did his best imitation of a zookeeper as he told us, "Please don't feed the engineers. If you start feeding them then they will no longer be able to feed themselves."

    Credit: Interop (CMP Media LLC)

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Here is Padre back at his desk in the NOC. He was one of the volunteers who helped set up and manage the InteropNet. In his day job, he works in IT for the Catholic Church, which he says makes abundant use of the latest technologies.

    Credit: Interop (CMP Media LLC)

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    The engineers inside NOC #2 all looked pretty busy. I'm not sure why they had that fan sitting on top of a stack of rack equipment on the desk.

    Credit: Interop (CMP Media LLC)

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    One of the NOC volunteers gives a pair of attendees a rundown of one of the technologies in use.

    Credit: Interop (CMP Media LLC)

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    With this look inside NOC #1, you can see the camera on the right and the surveillance app on the LCD screen on the left. The security was tight. In one instance, an attendee got bored one evening and started poking around and gained unauthorized access to a system. Using the cutting edge technologies in the InteropNet, the volunteers were able to pinpoint the attacker that night and then use the security camera technology to identify him.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Many of the InteropNet volunteers were wearing these t-shirts that said, "Sleep is for Pansies. Team InteropNet. Wide awake. Three days straight." However, back at my hotel I went up to a couple of the guys that were wearing these and asked them if they really stayed up for three days straight and they both shook their heads and said, "No." One of them said that Sunday (the day before the conference started) was a long day.

    Credit: Interop (CMP Media LLC)

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Network Access Control was a central topic at the show. Here's a diagram of the three implementation that were running: Cisco's Network Admission Control, Microsoft Network Access Protection, and TCG's Trusted Network Connect.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    As this list shows, there was broad-based cooperation from many different vendors in order to pull off the NAC lab and demo.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    The new technology that impressed me the most at Interop was the Xirrus WiFi Array. At first, I just thought this thing was a Wireless Access Point on steroids, but in fact, it's more like an entire wireless network in a box (albeit a round one). Here, John DiGiovanni of Xirrus popped the lid off and showed me how this thing works from the inside out.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Here I am at the Xirrus booth with John DiGiovanni and Alan Amrod. They not only were at Interop promoting their long-range, high-capacity WiFi solution that was just launched earlier this year, but their WiFi arrays were also providing wireless access to the conference after winning the bid from Interop earlier this year.

    I can report that the wireless Internet access was by far the best I have ever experienced at any conference. In fact, it's the first one that actually worked the whole time, even during the keynotes. Kudos to Xirrus. They have a great product and TechRepublic will certainly be doing more coverage of it in the future.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Another product that I was very impressed with was Splunk, which can help streamline the bane of an IT pro's existence - sifting through log files. Splunk aggregates log data and provides a powerful search and tagging mechanism that could revolutionize troubleshooting in IT.

    Here I am with Michael Baum, on the left. He's the CEO of Splunk and a former large-scale IT builder at IBM, Yahoo, and Infoseek. The guy in the middle is one of Splunk's sharp product guys who gave me a full demo. I love that his shirt has the number 42 in binary (Douglas Adams'fans will understand the reference). These guys were having more fun than anyone at the show, while also being sincerely passionate about their product. I've got a feeling we'll be hearing a lot more about Splunk in the future.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Network Physics gave me a great demo of their neworking and application monitoring product. In fact, I was very impressed when they used their standared config to show me information about some latency problems on some of the videos on our public Web site. This product has some powerful tools to help pinpoint slow apps, slow servers, and network problems - although as the sign says "it's NOT the network" most of the time.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    8e6 Technologies, shown giving a booth demo, has several powerful products that can help IT departments that need to block spyware, IM, P2P, and other dangerous apps in a high security environment. The big thing that 8e6 was touting at the show was its new Mobile Client that can enforce Acceptable Use Policies on laptops that aren't connected to the corporate network. I didn't get a close-up demo of this one but I was very intrigued by it.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Scott Kriens, CEO of Juniper, gave the first keynote. His topic was "Putting the 'Real' in Real-Time Enterprise."

    Credit: Interop (CMP Media LLC)

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Kriens drew a good crowd and piqued the interest of attendees with several interesting slides and some startling assertions about SOA.

    Credit: Interop (CMP Media LLC)

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    One of the attendees for the Kriens keynote was Eric Faurot (in the center with the black suit and silver tie). Faurot used to run COMDEX, the mother of all technology trade shows. Today, Faurot works for CMP and runs a variety of shows including Interop, which is one of the flagship shows for business IT.

    Credit: Interop (CMP Media LLC)

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Kriens focused Software as a Service and SOA as the wave of the future. I don't think there were many of us that had previously thought of SOA as being so broadly influential as Kriens painted it.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Maybe the most interesting slide in Kriens presentation was this one - a timeline on indexed IT spending. As you can see from the gaphic, we are currently at a historically significant low point for IT spending, and most of the low points in the past have been followed by a major upswing that was fueled by a specific technological advance.

    Kriens said we don't know what the next advance will be, but he was clearly pointing toward SOA and Software as a Service.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    One of best sessions from this edition of Interop was "A Look at the Future: Advanced Wireless Technologies" by Craig Mathias (of Fairpoint) and Hari Haran (of Longboard). No area of technology and IT is advancing more drastically right now than wireless and this session helped chart the progress and lay out the trajectory.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Here are Craig and Hari breaking down the future of wireless for us.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    The phrases "broadband," "convergence," and "4G" dominated much of the session. Interestingly, Craig talked about how WiMAX is becoming synonymous with 4G.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    I thought this slide was a great representation of how the different wireless technologies and protocols fit together, from Bluetooth at short range to WiMAX and beyond at long range.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Craig talked about how MIMO is the technology that is expanding the bandwidth of wireless networks in the next generation of wireless technologies and protocols.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    My CNET colleague Brian Cooley gave a great presentation on "The Ultimate Mobile Communicator." It was basically a show-and-tell on the coolest smartphones on the market. It was a little depressing to see how much cooler the phones are in Europe and Asia (and how much more variety they have), because their phone users are much more into using their phones for data than U.S. mobile users.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Of course, just down the street from the Javits Center is the place where many of the technology companies at Interop proverbially live and die - NASDAQ, which stands as a beacon of high tech commerce in Times Square.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Also on Times Square was this flashy ad from AMD that featured a continually growing calculation of "Estimated cost of energy spent worldwide by not using AMD-based servers." This is part of AMD's "power of cool" campaign and it is a pretty clever ad, even if the math and the facts are somewhat debatable.

    Credit: CENT Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Another Times Square fixture in New York during the Interop 2006 show was the single largest billboard I have ever seen. Here it is, a 35-story billboard from Motorola and Verizon Wireless that makes a pitch for the Motorola Q smartphone. I already wanted a Q before I saw the billboard, but I think it got a little cooler after seeing that.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    The NBC screen in Times Square is perhaps the greatest icon of this world-famous business and shopping district. I thought it was interesting to see that the space right below it is now occupied by Yahoo. I guess maybe technology companies are still on track for world dominance.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Although Fifth Avenue in Manhattan is known for Sax Fifth Avenue, FAO Schwartz, and other upscale shopping destinations, gearheads must also do a lot of shopping there because there's a huge upscale Best Buy as well.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    This is one of two giant signs to promote the Geek Squad in the Best Buy window. They must keep these techies pretty busy in Manhattan.

    Credit: CNET Networks

  • <b>by Jason Hiner</b>

    Just up Fifth Avenue from Best Buy was the place where - to my surprise - I found the largest gathering of technophiles. It was the Apple Store on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. In terms of design, it is quite possibly one of the most impressive retail stores in the world, and it was absolutely packed when I went there on a weeknight. For a closer look, see my separate photo gallery of the Apple Store.

by Jason Hiner

Registration for Interop New York 2006 was in the immense "Crystal Palace" of the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.

The difference between Interop and other IT conferences is that Interop not only talks about the latest technology but puts it to use for attendees to get their hands on in the InteropNet. Take a look at the InteropNet and learn about the products that attendees were buzzing about at this year's fall Interop event in New York.

Credit: CNET Networks

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About Jason Hiner

Jason Hiner is Global Editor in Chief of TechRepublic and Global Long Form Editor of ZDNet. He's co-author of the book, Follow the Geeks.