The spring Interop event kicks off in Las Vegas in less than two weeks - which means vendors from all areas of IT are readying new and improved wares to debut at the conference and exposition.

Network optimization promises to be a hot area at Interop. To help you get the most from your Interop trip (or learn what you’re missing), here are a few sessions that stood out to me among the scores of options:

* Optimizing the Network for Branch Efficiency

Robin Gareiss, senior founding partner of Nemertes Research, is moderating this hour-long session, which starts at 11:30 a.m. Tues. May 22. The session will examine the plethora of application acceleration, bandwidth optimization, latency reduction and route optimization tools available and help attendees determine which ones make the most sense in different settings. Speakers include executives from Cisco, Juniper Networks and Riverbed Technology.

* Managing and Controlling Application Performance

Moderated by Jim Metzler, vice president of Ashton, Metzler & Associates, this hour-long session will describe some of the key techniques that IT organizations can use to better manage and control application usage. It starts at 10:15 a.m. Wed. May 23. Speakers include executives from NetScout, NetQoS and Packeteer.

* Getting to Fast: Accelerating Web Applications

A panel of executives from Akamai Technologies, F5 Networks, Gomez and Ixia will examine different technologies for optimizing Web applications, including application delivery services that optimize WANs; front-end application devices that improve the way data centers handle requests; application response time technologies that measure performance; and content acceleration tools that offload processor-intensive tasks. The moderator is Alistair Croll, cofounder of Coradiant. The session starts at 10:15 a.m. Thurs. May 24.

On the expo floor, meanwhile, a slew of vendors will be demonstrating their network optimization wares, including: A10 Networks (booth #2475), AceNet Technology (458), Bivio Networks (304), Blue Coat Systems (1161), Cisco (1225), Citrix (725), Coradiant (3), Coyote Point Systems (1659), Crescendo Networks (1583), Exinda Networks (357), Expand Networks (325), F5 Networks (2249), Foundry Networks (1425), Internap Network Services (664), Itheon Networks (253), Ixia (1024), Juniper Networks (539), Kemp Technologies (241), Mazu Networks (332), NetQoS (2048), Network Instruments (1275), Packeteer (731), Radware (1949), Riverbed Technology (559), Shunra (460), Silver Peak Systems (352) and Stampede Technologies (2175).

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.