[156461] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Big Temporary Networks
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jo Rhett)
Tue Sep 18 16:19:55 2012
From: Jo Rhett <jrhett@netconsonance.com>
In-Reply-To: <10203926.24928.1347656101231.JavaMail.root@benjamin.baylink.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2012 13:19:00 -0700
To: Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Sep 14, 2012, at 1:55 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
> That's an interesting question indeed. The optimal solution here, of
> course, would be for Worldcons -- which are planned 3-4 years in =
advance --
> to get the right technical people in the loop with the property to see
> when in the next 2 years (after a bid is confirmed) they plan to =
upgrade
> the networking they have now... and make sure it will tolerate a =
"real"=20
> worst case. The business case for the property, of course, is that
> they're more salable to large technical conferences -- which makes =
them=20
> more money. Question is, is it enough.
Those people are already in the loop. Hi. Nice to see you again, Jay :)
Unfortunately, as I've said in the previous two messages, it simply =
isn't something that can be changed. If you are running a small =
convention that can fit into a dozen hotels in the city, you can make =
them compete on multiple levels including network. Since there are less =
than 4 cities in the world who could host a worldcon in more than one =
facility, there's zero competition. *
And frankly, the hotel contracts people have bigger problems to =
solve--namely, getting to use metric tons of convention floor space =
without paying much, if any money. Worldcon memberships are $150 each =
unless you wait until the last minute.
This is a problem that large technical conferences with thousand dollar =
memberships can solve. They have money to throw at the hotel. Not =
fan-run conventions whose entire budget is less than the spare capital =
that Usenix keeps in their account. (I've seen both and can state this =
as a positive fact.)=20
* The one place that competition can occur is in the bidding process. =
Part of what we all ask bid committees is about the network access at =
the location. And we vote based on what we can find out. However, the =
number of us who vote that way are fairly small, as most attendees have =
other priorities like inexpensive food options, cheaper hotel options, =
etc.
--=20
Jo Rhett
Net Consonance : net philanthropy to improve open source and internet =
projects.
