Hi Zach,

We are open to all ideas about the SCALE network. So, don't be afraid to think outside the box. I meant to mention this earlier; most of us have been working with SCALE for the better part of a decade, and a lot of the work we do now is a property of - "that's how it's been done before". Many decisions taken a decade ago were the right one for a smaller conference, or of the sheer amount of work the implementor had at that point in time. No one's really looked to changing things because, quite frankly, it's a lot of effort. 

Others on the list can tell you a lot more about the number of access points, and the bandwidth usage etc. As you can gather, it's not the most complicated network that has ever been set up, but it's not trivial either. The hardest thing about the network is that there's about 5 days between build up and tear down. Another complication is that even though we have been in the PCC this year, the attrition in the team has been expensive, and the effort feels like a new venue all over again. The last of the big issues about the SCALE network, especially at the PCC, is that there are two buildings in question, and we can't assume anything about access. We might have access to the tunnel, and the roof, and the power, and the network jacks on the wall, etc but we might not. This year, we found out, sometimes the hard way, that we made a false assumption here and there.

Will a fully sponsored network solve all this? Probably not. However, it certainly might help the fundamental goals of the conference - that of providing a great show for our attendees. 

Once the servers have been migrated to the new location, we can all have a pow-wow and come up with strategies on the network in 2017. And yes, at that time, a new Tech Chair that will be proposed.

Cheers,

Bala.
bala@socallinuxexpo.org


On Sun, Jun 19, 2016 at 8:22 PM, SCALE Planning List <scale-planning@lists.linuxfests.org> wrote:
At the risk of diving into the weeds, running rooms 101-105 all from a single switch is going to mean that you have a LOT of very long wires that you have to run to get from one end of the building to the other. Getting these wires under the soft walls exposes them to a substantial risk of damage.

In the past, we have had one switch for each 'speaker room', so with our layout last year, 101/102 had one swich, 103 had a second, 104/105 had a third.

This last year we daisy-chained the APs to save on wire runs (with mixed results, this is one of the things we will need to discuss this year). This is not an option with PoE equipment.

We run far more APs per square foot of space than anyone else I have heard of, but we also have a much better wireless network than anyone else I have heard of, so I would be very leery of anyone proposing a 'normal' density of APs.

For that matter, the facility already has their own wifi network in place. We pay them to turn it off, but if you are going to end up just replicating it, you may as well use what's built-in.

David Lang

On Sun, 19 Jun 2016, Zach Underwood wrote:

Let's have a call. I need to get a rough count of the hardware that is
needed to make sure that ubnt will support such a large network, but ubnt
does like the idea of supporting SCALE2017 to make a case study out of it.

Ubnt's and my hope is to make the network hardware all ubnt unifi line from
the APs, switches and routers. This will give us full access to all POE
gigabit switches, 10gbit uplinks and all POE wireless AC APs. The whole
system will be centrally controlled by the unifi software.

This is the example of the type of documentation that I did for SELF2016:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wb0XxbTMdrKJOujZM_3AeM6phN3wrS2AfDbGLg3jinQ/edit?usp=sharing

Here is the start of the documentation for SCALE2016, it still needs a lot
of work.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Sz8ACRvItlzsZBaIC-7Em-D8iUg2QQkteaM72F2BL-I/edit?usp=sharing


On Sun, Jun 19, 2016 at 9:04 PM, David Lang <david@lang.hm> wrote:

On Sun, 19 Jun 2016, SCALE Planning List wrote:

I have heard back form Ubiquiti and have gotten buy in from them for
SCALE2017. I am working on the high level design for network to get idea
of
what gear we would need.


Please dont' design the network without talking to the rest of us.

Here is the best map of the site that I could find
http://pasadenacenter.visitpasadena.com/facility/
I have some questions

On the schedule from scale14x I see that ballrooms I and J was used but
cant find them on the map.


they are above the D and E sectiosn of the ballroom

For exhibit hall was hall A and B used?


yes, everything

Do i see that right that rooms 101-105 have airwalls between them?


they can, this last year we had 101/102 103 104/105 (three spaces)

What room was used for command/staff
What area was used for noc?
You said in a early email that pre-wired drops was used to connect to the
rooms. How many mdf/idf was used? What was the connect between them.
Is it too early or have you all picked out what rooms will be used?


last year we were still unsure of what rooms would be used for what a
month before the show.

the wiring closet info is part of what we are going to have to discover.
We have fiber between the two building, and copper within the buildings. We
put our own equipment in all of the wiring closets (the only part of the
stock network we used was the in-wall wiring and the router to the outside
world. Everything else was ours.

David Lang





On Sun, Jun 19, 2016 at 10:35 AM, SCALE Planning List <
scale-planning@lists.linuxfests.org> wrote:

Hi Zach,

We'd love to have you on board. I see that you have signed up to the tech
list. That's a great place to start.

We sure can appreciate some new blood and a different perspective to the
networks at Scale.

Bala.
bala@socallinuxexpo.org

On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 11:34 PM, SCALE Planning List <
scale-planning@lists.linuxfests.org> wrote:

Hey folks --

I'm sitting out here on the periphery of this discussion (mainly because
I'm more into the audio stuff :), but I did want to throw out some
"scale"
(haha) on the networking effort, since I was involved in a good portion
of
it this past year.

It was interesting to me to see how it all came together, how the
diagrams laid out everything, where the equipment was staged, etc.
Clearly,
someone spent a lot of time planning out things, right down to the
length
of specific cable runs needed in each room on each wall. There was a
TON of
networked gear to distribute and connect. Even if (for the moment) you
discount the internet access points, there was still a lot of work going
into cabling, devices, placement, testing, taping, replacing bad gear,
etc.
Add back in the connection of AP's and it was about double the effort I
just mentioned.

Zach, I love the idea of a vendor-supported internet option, but I would
highly recommend that you talk to some of the folks who laid out gear
last
year and get their input to understand the tremendous work effort that
went
into this on the day before the event. I have huge respect for everyone
who
stuck it out into the wee hours of the morning just to make sure it
worked
the next day.

I came in early on Wednesday to help out. I got there in the afternoon,
and I worked until pretty much midnight (let's say, easily, 6 hours)
just
laying out the networking for the AP's (i.e., not including the cameras
and
pods). And I was one of a team of 6-8 people that night, I believe.
Simply
laying out the cabling took a while, and that's literally just laying
all
of it on the floor according to diagram. Then the AP's were placed and
balanced, making sure that they were under chairs, that the matching
network cables reached, that the correct ports were used, that they were
near power outlets or extension cords, and so on. And finally -- what I
think was the WORST part -- comes the taping down of the cabling and
power
conduits. That took 3-4 people another maybe 2-3 hours just for that one
aspect. And dozens of gaff tape rolls. Tape was everywhere, including
under
moveable doors and panels, along walls, under chairs, across audio
cables,
on stages, etc.

If I had to take an educated guess, I'd venture that the cabling and
placement of AP's probably took 45-50 man hours. Not kidding. Most of us
were also trained network admins, so this wasn't like pulling uneducated
folks off the street; we knew what we were doing, and it still took that
long. Your comment about "*All that needs to be done at the show is
place and connect all of the hardware*" is what I'm referring to here:


about 50 hours of work for JUST THAT. Nothing else. :)

So, while I applaud the enthusiasm and excitement (and especially the
volunteerism!), please keep in mind that this one single aspect of the
show
is a HUGE undertaking. If you go into this and gain a sponsor, you're
still
going to need a big crew, extremely well-placed and planned diagrams,
and
an organized and inventoried stock of cabling and parts. I completely
agree
with Ilan on this -- your help is very welcome and appreciated, but
please
go into this knowing it's going to be a huge effort.

Just my $0.02 anyhow.

Thanks,

Bruce Bergman




On 2016-06-18 18:45, SCALE Planning List wrote:

Hi Zach,

Excited to see you're so passionate about building out the SCALE
network.
We'd love to have you on board on our volunteer team.  Lets sync up and
come to consensus on a plan before reaching out to sponsors.  We have a
great deal of hardware that we own already and we should get on the same
page before we make external requests, especially since many of the
hardware vendors sponsor us in other ways at the moment.

I'll defer to the current Tech Chair, who is Bala,  on timing but lets
schedule a meeting soon. We're just hitting the time of year where we'd
normally kick off our event planning for 2017.

I believe Bala is traveling this weekend, but I'll add you to the tech
list shortly and we can continue discussing how you can best help the
team.

Thanks again for wanting to make scale awesome.

Regards,
Ilan



Ilan Rabinovitch
Conference Chair
Southern California Linux Expo
877-831-2569 x110 Voice
818-442-1865 Mobile
ilan@linuxfests.org Email

---
Ask me about sponsorship and speaking opportunities at LinuxFests.org's
upcoming events:
DevOps Days SV -  June 24-25, 2016 - Mountain View, CA
Texas Linux Fest - July 8-9, 2016, Austin TX
SCALE 15x - March 2-5, 2017 - Pasadena, CA

On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 3:50 PM, SCALE Planning List <
scale-planning@lists.linuxfests.org> wrote:

Ok now I have a good idea of the size of the network and will go to the
two sponsors to make sure I have there buy in.
On Jun 18, 2016 6:49 PM, "SCALE Planning List" <
scale-planning@lists.linuxfests.org> wrote:

On Sat, 18 Jun 2016, SCALE Planning List wrote:

Oh and any documents of network layout from last year.


mostly these only exist as paper copies. With all the resignations in
Tech after last year (at least 4 significant contributers, including
both
Chairs), I am about the only one with even a reasonably good idea of
how
things were setup. Anything else would involve reverse engineering
things
from the configs. The better approach is to discuss what we want to
do with
the people interested in the design level of things (ideally in
person, a
whiteboard is really desirable for this sort of work), and then setup
this
year's plan from that.

I believe that I am the only person left who had the router password
for this least year, and I never logged into one.

David Lang

On Jun 18, 2016 4:35 PM, "SCALE Planning List" <

scale-planning@lists.linuxfests.org> wrote:

What type and speeds of 2016 internet connection?


What type of APs used in 2016?

How many concurrent connected devices were there during 2016?

What was the cabling like? In ceiling, run along walls on the floor,
pre-wired drops back to idf/mdf?

What type of switches were used in 2016?

Can I get a cad drawing/detailed floor layout of the location?

Was the network used for things other than wifi and video recording,
such
as, vendors, registration desk, staff or anything else?

What was the peak lan usage in mbps?

Total cable length ran in 2016?


On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 4:25 PM, SCALE Planning List <
scale-planning@lists.linuxfests.org> wrote:

Hi Zach,


Thanks for your interest in helping with SCALE's network and
streaming
needs.  I'm coping a few folks that can help answer your questions,
and let
you know where planning stands for 2017 and 2018.

Bala copied here is the interim tech chair, between him, David who
replied a little bit ago, and myself we  can help share our current
plans
and let you know where we might need help.

In terms of streaming Michael Proctor, also copied here, leads our
A/V
team which normally run our live streaming and session recordings.
They
record the sessions using IP cameras, and have most of the editing
automated via some software they've written. I'm sure they'd love a
hand
with either the automation tooling or staffing our cameras.

Looking forward to working with you on SCALE 15x.

Regards,
Ilan Rabinovitch
Conference Chair
Southern California Linux Expo
877-831-2569 x110 Voice
818-442-1865 Mobile
ilan@linuxfests.org Email

---
Ask me about sponsorship and speaking opportunities at
LinuxFests.org's
upcoming events:
DevOps Days SV -  June 24-25, 2016 - Mountain View, CA
Texas Linux Fest - July 8-9, 2016, Austin TX
SCALE 15x - March 2-5, 2017 - Pasadena, CA

On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 7:19 AM, SCALE Planning List <
scale-planning@lists.linuxfests.org> wrote:

Can I get the contact info for Stu so I can ask some question of
him?


On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 1:18 AM, SCALE Planning List <
scale-planning@lists.linuxfests.org> wrote:

On Sat, 18 Jun 2016, SCALE Planning List wrote:


I hope that this is the right place for this.


I have been asked to reach out the SCALE to see if you all are
in
need
of
help with live streaming, event networking, Wifi or internet
access. I
have
just finished up doing the South East Linux Fest (SELF) Wifi and
was
contacted by Ubiquiti (a hardware maker) and another company
Altispeed
<http://www.altispeed.com/> about sponsoring the networking
needs for
SCALE.

As an example of the event networking I have done, here is the
post I
did
about the SELF2016 network:



http://community.ubnt.com/t5/UniFi-Stories/SouthEast-Linux-Fest-2016/cns-p/1590779


Here is some information about what we've done in the past.




https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa12/technical-sessions/presentation/lang_david_wireless



https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/april-2013-volume-38-number-2/wireless-means-radio

This last year we deployed about 110 access points around the
show.

The Conference center provides the Internet connection, and we
have
paid them to allow us to run everything else.

There is an opening for them to sponsor some of this. We can
definantly
use help setting up and running things. At the moment, we don't
know who
will be replacing Stu as the person setting up and running the
network for
the show. Michael Proctor-Smith is going to be running the AV
group, so he
will be continuing to spearhead the streaming effort.

The current plan is to select the new Tech Chair in a month or
so.

David Lang

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--
Zach Underwood (RHCE,RHCSA,RHCT,UACA)
My website <http://zachunderwood.me>
advance-networking.com

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--
Zach Underwood (RHCE,RHCSA,RHCT,UACA)
My website <http://zachunderwood.me>
advance-networking.com

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