Cisco Live is Cisco Systems’ annual customer/partner conference. Its tens of thousands of participants expect top-notch Internet access from the conference site, and presenters need real-time access to online resources at Cisco HQ. I wrote a case study about the equipment that was deployed at the convention center one year to meet those needs.
The event’s NOC team needed both wireless and VPN access to NOC resources from the event’s venue at the Moscone Center, their rooms at adjacent hotels, and the Cisco campus located 40 miles to the south. The challenge for wireless connectivity was to keep the NOC constantly accessible to authorized users while blocking connections from anyone who might want to show off his or her hacking skills at a high-profile event. Another challenge was positioning secure VPN access in a physical form factor given the restraints of space, power, and cooling in the event environment. To address these challenges, Cisco IT used the FlexPod, an integrated computing, networking, and storage solution developed by Cisco and NetApp.
