The Interop Time Machine

Take a trip with me back to the 1990’s. The Internet was going mainstream. Corporate networks were on the rise. In my case, I was on a Banyan Vines network. There were a few Windows, Unix, and Linux servers here and there, but the bulk of it was Banyan Vines. I used Cabletron switches and hubs, Cisco routers, and Pairgain DSU’s. For monitoring, I had HP Openview. Sniffers were dedicated boxes from Network General and HP. Firewalls were Secure Computing Sidewinders. My web proxy box was from Netscape. My wireless gear was from Breezecom and linked buildings together that were too expensive to run fiber to. I even had Allied Telesyn transceivers all over the place due to a large number of AUI ports. Notice a pattern? Not one vendor dominated my network. I was a practitioner of technology and not of vendors.

Now, fast forward to 2011……

The moment I set foot on the show floor at Interop, I knew something was different. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, but after an hour or so of walking around the various vendor booths, I knew what it was. It was the 1990’s all over again. So many choices for technology all in one place and not one vendor was dominating it. I know some people are thinking “Well duh. It’s Interop! There’s always lots of vendors there.” Point taken.

I’m going to list, in alphabetical order, the vendors I interacted with at Interop. I know there were more booths that I didn’t visit. I put in about 10 hours on the show floor between 2 days, and even with that amount of time, I couldn’t visit them all. If I listed them, it means I either walked through their booth, talked to someone about their solution, or both. In most cases it was both.

Switching
Alcatel-Lucent
Arista
Avaya
Brocade
Cisco
Dell(SMB line is Dell’s. Enterprise grade stuff is Brocade rebranded.)
Enterasys
Extreme
Force10
HP
Juniper

Routing
Alcatel-Lucent
Brocade
Cisco
Force10
HP
Juniper
Vyatta

Wireless
Avaya
Brocade(Rebranded Motorola)
Cisco
Dell(Rebranded Aruba)
HP
Juniper
Motorola
Xirrus

Voice
Avaya
Cisco
HP
Microsoft
ShoreTel

Load Balancing
A10 Networks
Brocade
Cisco
Citrix
F5

Security(VPN/Firewall/IPS/etc)
Barracuda
Cisco
Citrix
F5
HP
Juniper
SonicWall
WatchGuard

WAN Optimization
BlueCoat
Cisco
Juniper
Riverbed

Monitoring/Management(Wired and wireless)
Cisco
Gigamon
HP
MetaGeek
NetScout
Riverbed
ScienceLogic

I know there are plenty of good vendors that aren’t on this network-centric list. Some of those vendors were at Interop, but I didn’t get to visit their booths. I also would have loved to have seen companies like Aerohive, Ruckus, SilverPeak, and Palo Alto with booths on the expo floor. The point that I am REALLY trying to make here is that there were plenty of options to look at. Plenty of engineers to talk to and plenty of products to investigate. As an IT professional within a corporate environment, my goal is simply to make the best technology decisions for my employer. I saw quite a few interesting things out at Interop. I hope to write about some of them in the near future. I am still trying to process all of the information I took in and find time to jot things down in a coherent fashion.

Let me leave you with one thought. If you are a networking professional, you should be familiar with a few of the companies I listed. For example, maybe you focus on one general area like wireless. If you look at the list of wireless companies and can only talk about 1 vendor’s product/solution set, do some research on the others. There is no “one size fits all” company. Problems are solved in a number of ways and usually with a number of vendors.

If your goal is to become a better network engineer, you need to see what is being done across the industry. You might find that your vendor of choice is doing the best job out there. You might also find that they aren’t. If you get a chance to attend something like Interop, do it. Even if all you do is walk the floor, it will be worth it. Trust me.

Disclaimer – HP paid for my travel and accommodations for Interop. Anything I say about any vendors(HP included) in regards to Interop will be my own personal viewpoint.