NSDI ‘07 is over and I have pretty graphs to share. The most interesting thing about this conference network is that our uplink was a pair of channel bonded T1s that we went through considerable effort to arrange. The connection was completed and functional the Friday before the conference started, and worked fine on Monday, but sometime between Monday evening and Tuesday morning one of the T1s failed. I figured that out mid-afternoon on Tuesday as my ssh sessions became usless. It turns out the hotel’s ISP had a bad card on their end. They remedied the problem Thursday morning. Most of Wednesday was pretty painful as a result.
I’ve also included our AP association graphs. NSDI had a lot of network use by non-attendees. I think we’re going to have to finally start using an authentication system.
FAST ‘07 finished today. This is the first conference of any size that we’ve let the Hotel provide wireless for, and it went well. I have to say I was a bit dissappointed that it was possible to have a conference wireless network without my ministrations, but at the end of the day it was nice to be able to focus on other work. Like fighting with power cicuits and laser printers.
We always rent an HP 4000 series laser printer or three to print badges and other registration materials. Usually I just plug it into the same power strip as the registration laptops and switch, turn everything on, and it all works. This time, I plug everything in, printer last, turn on the printer, and my Cisco 2900XL flips out. Fine I think, power surge on starting the printer, how often do I need to turn it on? None the less, I move the printer to another power outlet on the same wall. I’m not naive enough to think that the outlet will be on another circuit, but optomistic enough to think that will help somehow. Wrong. Printer on, switch blinks like a cylon with a seizure. Meh. I can live with my switch freaking out once a day when I turn on the printer right? Oh, except that the switch freaks out when the printer prints too. Not helpful. Time to call hotel engineering.
A maintenance guy shows up and tells me that he’s turned up the juice and everything should be fine now. Okay. Plug printer in, watch switch freak out (hearing Trans-Siberian Orchestra in my head), and tell maintenance guy that it isn’t fixed. Maintenance guy gets me another power strip, not comprehending the situation. See, the printer is plugged directly into the wall now, no power strip in the way. Fine. Plan B.
I yank the 2900 and replace it with two dumb Netgear 8 port switches. Having done this once or twice I was smart enough to pull two cables from our confernece “office” to the reg desk, some 35 meters away, about half of which had to be taped down so no one would trip over it. I loose monitoring, but at least we can register folks. Oh, I use a seperate network for staff and the terminals folks register with.
