Blog Posts tagged ‘conference’

I was lucky enough to get a free pass to the Australian Network Operators Group conference from one of our upstream providers, so that’s what I’m up to at the start of this week. It is interesting to compare it to my experiences at the several LinuxConfAU conferences I’ve been to. On the whole I can say it is more Enterprisey, far less smelly, and a generally smaller but more focussed conference. Obviously network topics dominate the conference (although there are a number of presentations that border on other areas).

Somewhat confusingly for a sysadmin, they named this conference AusNOG03. They have decided to not use a year-based numbering system nor one that starts at 0 (which would please most of us), and as a kicker have locked themselves into a two-digit Y2K-style bug. Well, it’s only 3 years old, we’ll let that point slide.

Unhealthy snacks ahoy

Typically tasty and unhealthy snacks could be found upon entry – some delightful mini-croissants with ham and cheese. Coffee and tea staples were omnipresent. Apparently there was a large imbibing session last night and most delegates attended.

Conference room

It is being held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Sydney. I have to give them points for style, and functionality. Not only do we have actual stable desks for writing and computing, but there is a power board for every three seats.

Legacy writing equipment, water glass and mints

An array of useful items were at every seat. They clearly recognise that network operators lack social etiquette and have strewn mints far and wide. They are on the tables, they are in the conference bags.

To briefly summarise what I have taken in so far – the Internet is not yet blowing up; network operators and BGP are doing a good job and making the Internet as a whole (which is going from a long stringy network, to a fat wide network) better; Open-Source content delivery networks are on the horizon and may become a reality some time soon.