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| SC06 Conference Volunteers Building Huge Network When SC06, the premier international conference of high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis convenes Nov. 11-17 in the Tampa Convention Center, the center will be one of the best-connected sites on the planet. And, as a service for future conventions, much of the sate-of-the-art networking infrastructure installed in the center will remain in place. Every year, a team of volunteers works for more than a year to design, build and manage the SC conference network known as SCinet. For SC06, the SCinet team will be bringing in ten 10-gigabits-per-second (Gbps) network connections to the convention center. The combined network capability will be about 20, 000 times that of the fastest residential Internet service provided by cable TV and telephone companies. The first big challenge was getting the network connections to downtown Tampa — the major network links operated by Level3 and Qwest ended about 12 miles from the convention center. Using fiber optic cable provided by Verizon, the SCinet team bridged the network from downtown Tampa to the convention center, where they started on the next challenge. The Tampa Convention Center's internal network could not support the requirements of SC06, so the SCinet team installed about 64, 000 feet — more than 12 miles — of fiber optics and copper wire. In addition to providing two network drops for every meeting room, SCinet installed a high bandwidth infrastructure serving all parts of the exhibit areas, where more than 225 industrial and research exhibitors will showcase their latest systems, services and scientific achievements. SCinet is also providing wireless connectivity throughout the convention center. write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Exhibition News :: home page |