Microsoft stands up temporary network for Tech.Ed; network stands up to attendees

Stephen Withers
Friday, 02 September 2011 11:40

Business IT - Networking

The temporary network set up at the Gold Coast Convention Centre for Microsoft's Tech.Ed conference withstood the onslaught of thousands of attendees and the demands of speakers.

Microsoft's annual Tech.Ed conference attracts around 3000 attendees, and most of them take a notebook, tablet or smartphone (perhaps all three). Couple that with live demonstrations during some of the presentations, and that means a lot of network traffic - especially with the increasing use of social media.

Telstra provides the event with a 1000Mbps Internet link directly from its Charlotte Street exchange in Brisbane, giving "very, very stong connectivity," said Jeff Alexander of Microsoft Australia's developer platform evangelist team. There is also a 500Mbps connection from Over The Wire as a backup.

Internally, the network involves a 2Gbps link between the wired and wireless routers, and 1Gbps connections for the demonstration hall and the speaker rooms. All told, there are 77 switches giving 2000 ports.

Microsoft has learned a lot about operating a wireless LAN for a large number of Tech.Ed attendees over the years, and one of the changes for 2011 is improved load sharing between wireless access points. During the keynote session on Tuesday afternoon, there were 900 concurrent wireless sessions, each getting a 1ms ping time to Brisbane.

"We've made sure the up and down[stream traffic] is working well," said Mr Alexander, and Lync users were reporting good video performance.

Page 2: "A bucketload of users with very high expectations".