Ready for the day. Coffee, iPad w/keyboard. Today’s focus seems to primarily be security with the first couple of talks on DDOS mitigation. Then SDN (Software Defined Networks), a topic that I found fascinating but not much of an opportunity to try it out. Now, it looks like it may be ready for actual limited pseudo-production deployment.
It’s kind of interesting to see all of the new faces here at the meeting. It means that the organization is healthy and growing. I don’t know what the actual attendance is but I’m seeing a lot of “First Time Attendee” tags on the name badges.
This is a lunch meeting of the Performance Working Group. Maybe a couple dozen people. Some of the tools that the group had been relying on are no longer being supported so things are changing even though the net result rarely changes. Over the years, we’ve had workshops in Alaska from several of these working groups but generally there wasn’t a lot of interest within the university community. IPv4 multicast once, IPv6 twice, and Performance once.
One of the topics was the deployment of small devices running PerfSonar (the name used for the toolset by the Performance Working Group). Different campuses have used small x86 PC’s and Raspberry Pi’s. The main advantage of the x86 devices was 1Gb/s interface versus 100 Mb/s. I used to run PerfSonar nodes in Fairbanks and Barrow. The Fairbanks installation was limited by the lack of 1Gb/s port for the server. Probably no longer an issue but I have the server turned off. The Barrow server is turned off right now since I’m not up there often enough to keep the node updated. It was useful for local network testing and verifying the throughput on the satellite link. Testing does impact user throughput so it was not done on a regular basis.
This was followed by an afternoon of talks, a vendor reception, and a connectors meeting. By 7 I was pretty exhausted and passed on several dinner invites and headed for the hotel. This 24 hour diner is right on the corner next to the hotel and has decent food. I stopped for a quick snack on the way.
Wait a minute. I thought you were retired. Looking at the meeting photo gave me the shivers. In addition to shaving and haircuts, I've sworn off gatherings that involve PowerPoint....
ReplyDeleteYou sure get around Richard.
You mean that this isn't the way that "retired" things work? If I avoided PowerPoint, I'd end up skipping the family reunions as well...
DeleteQuite the geekfest this gathering....any good swag?
ReplyDeleteThat's a good way of putting it. You'd like today's meeting.
DeleteAs far as swag, no, not really. Not really that kind of meeting. There may be a dozen vendors at most and most of them were also sponsors which means that they spent most of their event budget on things like sponsoring a meal.