The End of Interop 09

This event has been one hell of a ride, you can say. To take part in this event was such an honor. I met a lot of great people, hung out and enjoyed my tech talk with companies.

One of my most memorable moments was meeting Father Robert of the Jesuits. Kind of nerdy to say, but I watch his “gadget” videos and finally got to meet the man behind the screen. He is a very humble man and kind hearted as well..also very very down to earth. Here’s a video from Interop:

I literally almost felt like a little kid at Disneyland because of this event. I guess you can attribute that feeling to receiving from toys and shirts from almost every booth. Also the Xirrus boxing ring was a show for all to watch. In result, I feel dead and tired because the event has ended, just like how you feel when you come home from a long day at Disneyland.

I hope you readers understand that I am extremely drained and tired, so I will continue my normal blogging next week! Promise to do twice as much to make up for the lost days.

Boxing at Interop..Courtesy of Xirrus

As stated in my previous post, I’m busy but LOVING IT! Interop 2009 is amazing. This is the third and final day of Interop and I’m sad, but glad that it is over. I’m glad to be coming home, but sad to be leaving.

If anyone has stopped by the Xirrus booth, then you all know what I’m talking about. Day 1 and day 2 of Interop, Xirrus had 4 bouts each day. It seemed to me there were two lightweight bouts, one heavyweight, and one women’s bout.

None of these matches are set up, so it can go either way. I actually made sure to come to the booth everytime they had a match. During two of the bouts for day 2, it ended with a little bit of blood splatter on the boxing mat!

If you want to view all of the fights so far, just search “Xirrus” on youtube, or go to their InteropTV page.

Here’s my favorite fight of the day. These girls go at it hard just like the men!

Interop 2009 Las Vegas: Web 2.0 At Its Best

I would like to apologize that for the next few days, my posts will be more geared towards Interop (if I do get a chance to post that is). I am taking part as an attendee at Interop 2009 in the place that never sleeps, Las Vegas.

Coming to Interop, I realized that Web 2.0 has taken a brand new toll on companies and individuals today. Almost everybody has been twittering and facebooking about their experience with what they are doing at Interop. Some exhibitors even have a Web 2.0 section in their booth, such as Xirrus. Xirrus has one section in their amazing boxing ring booth that is just for Web 2.0. They encourage you to blog, facebook, twitter, flickr, and feed what is going on at Interop.

There are laptops everywhere and blackberries with twitter enabled. Can’t wait to fill you guys in on what’s happening next at Interop. I got here kind of late so I missed out on one of the boxing matches, but Xirrus employees have captured it on video. They said it would be on their youtube channel very soon, so keep a lookout for that!

Inside Interop Blog Gives Detail on Xirrus Arrays

I thought this was an awesome blog that Brian Chee posted about Xirrus. Funny thing was I posted something about Xirrus yesterday for being the Wi-Fi provider at Interop. I would like to share what Brian blogged about:

Back in the day, a network engineer commented that “…we sure had to run a lot of wire for wireless…” The gist being that we needed to put in a whole heck of a lot of wireless access points to support the loads found at a technology trade show. Now this is NOT to say that the InteropNET venue is by any means “normal”, because it isn’t. From the NOC we can typically see hundreds of access points with people stomping all over each other with their AP’s cranked up to full volume in a feeble attempt to drown out their neighbor. We also have one heck of a lot of territory to cover since our guests will find a quiet spot just about everywhere in the convention center. So our challenges for wireless are: (1) the need for LOTS of coverage, and (2) the need for intelligent coverage so that we don’t add to the “shouting match” between the hundreds of access points in the exhibit hall.

Our partners at Xirrus are back with their flying saucer WiFi arrays, hovering over the exhibit hall, and on tripods throughout the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. However, these flying saucers actually have up to sixteen radios in each saucer, with sectional antennas and patented signal guides to more intelligently direct the signal to where it’s needed instead of just blasting in a 360 degree circle. The end result for the InteropNET is a whole lot less wire run to support wireless and instead of a hundred or so access points, we’re talking about a dozen now.

These “sector” antennas are mounted along the rim of the saucer, each one covering a piece of the “pie” so to speak. With each radio being individually controllable, the Xirrus folks can “shape” the radio energy to better cover odd shaped areas. One of their favorite examples are schools and how they tend to have a high density of users in long narrow buildings.

These anonymous “heat maps” are actual measurements from various Xirrus customer schools….the funny thing is that warehouses also have heat maps that look like these but for a different reason. Your typical warehouse has long rows of metal shelves with stuff on them and the signal from traditional access points will bounce around like billiard balls causing all kinds of multipath interference. The Xirrus solution of shaping the RF energy patterns, greatly reduces multipathing allowing more throughput with less energy.

To get a better glimpse of the technology and Xirrus’ role in the InteropNET, I shot a little video of John Merrill at hotstage where he shows off the guts of an array.

Xirrus Will Be Wi-Fi Provider At Interop 2009

Wi-Fi company Xirrus will be the Wi-Fi provider at this year’s Interop in Las Vegas, NV. Xirrus has been the official Wi-Fi provider for Interop for the past few years, so this time it won’t be anything different. However, Xirrus will deliver the 802.11n network that we have been waiting for so long. With Interop coming up in three weeks, I’m looking forward to attending this event and to trying out the “n” network! Check out the press release of the news:

Xirrus, Inc., the Wi-Fi “Power-Play” that delivers the most wireless coverage, bandwidth, and throughput in the industry announced today that they have been selected to be the official wireless provider for Interop Las Vegas (May 17-21, 2009) and New York (November 16-20, 2009). Xirrus will deliver the 802.11n network for Interop attendees and exhibitors throughout the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas and the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York. This is the fourth time Xirrus has been chosen as the InteropNet wireless provider due to the power and simplicity of our Wi-Fi Array platform.

“Over the past two decades, Interop has advanced the growth and evolution of the IT industry—this year is no different,” said Lenny Heymann, General Manager of Interop. “Thanks to Xirrus, we can continue to use the latest standards like 802.11n -based network—a network that will deliver vast amounts of bandwidth to thousands of concurrent users.”

The Xirrus Wi-Fi Array integrates 4, 8, 12, 16, or 24 802.11abg+n radios with an onboard Gigabit Switch, Wi-Fi Controller, Wi-Fi Firewall, dedicated Wi-Fi Threat Sensor, and Spectrum Analyzer into a single device. Xirrus’ solution delivers 4X the performance and coverage along with 75% less devices, cabling, switch ports, and installation time compared to traditional access points because unlike access points the Xirrus Wi-Fi Array utilizes segmented directional antennas to better utilize and manage the RF energy of the device.

“Providing the 802.11n Wi-Fi network for this prestigious gathering of IT experts is an honor and demonstrates the strength of our Wi-Fi architecture in challenging environments such as Interop,” said Dirk Gates, Founder and CEO of Xirrus. “Distributed Wi-Fi architectures, like the Xirrus Wi-Fi Array, are overtaking centralized architectures the same way Ethernet overtook ATM in the 1990’s. The distributed intelligence and simplicity of our Wi-Fi Array allows us to quickly deploy a network with significantly fewer devices and provide exhibitors and attendees with the highest performance possible for voice, video, and data.”

Interop runs May 17 through 21, 2009 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Xirrus will showcase its 802.11n products at booth #1331. More information is available at http://www.interop.com.