In our last newsletter we discussed the fact that the Vegas Interop conference is notably less focused on networking than it used to be and that naïve people can interpret that to mean that networking is less important. We don't agree with that interpretation and will use this WAN newsletter to discuss a few sessions that Jim will moderate at Interop that highlight just how critical networking really is.

One of the sessions that Jim is most looking forward to is entitled “ Is Routing Undergoing a Mid Life Crisis?” If you read the last newsletter you realize that we hate sessions that are characterized by the boredom that results form “Death by PowerPoint.” Because of our aversion to that boredom, the panelists on this session will not be allowed to use PowerPoint as this will be entirely a question and answer session. The panelists are from Juniper, Cisco and Vyatta. Jim will ask the panelists questions and will encourage the audience to also. In addition, Jim will encourage the panelists to ask questions of each other. This should be a very interesting and insightful panel.

Jim is moderating another PowerPoint-free session entitled, “A Comparison of WAN Optimization controllers.” The panelists on this session are from Citrix, Blue Coat, F5, Riverbed, Ipanema and Cisco. This session will have the same format as the one previously mentioned. Jim will ask the panelists questions and will encourage the audience to also. In addition, Jim will encourage the panelists to ask questions of each other.

For most of the last decade, the LAN has been pretty staid. In virtually all cases, large LANs were based around an architecture that had three tiers: access, distribution and core. LAN design was also based on two key parameters: speed and availability. In most cases, there was no need to place a lot of intelligence in the LAN switch. But now, driven by factors such as security, collaboration and virtualization there appears to be the need for a more intelligent LAN switch and possibly a new LAN architecture. Find out more about that as representatives from HP, Consentry, Enterasys, and Cisco participate on a panel entitled, “Is there a need for a next generation LAN switch?”

As we mentioned in the last newsletter, you can follow (at least some of) Jim’s exploits in Vegas on Twitter (ashtonmetzler) and can read about some of the key sessions in Jim’s application delivery blog.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Jim Metzler is vice president of Ashton, Metzler & Associates.