Ahhhh, the convention network...

Last con I went to had a whole lot of vendors demoing wifi-based voice equipment, and none of the demos worked for more than a couple seconds, if they were lucky. If I was going to be in a booth for a couple days, showing off kit that only required a local connection, I'd bring a router with me. Of course, that might be one reason why I'm not a sales guy.

It does suck when you have to access off-site servers for your presentation though, prolly why Defcon maintains a segregated presenters' network, with wired connections. Then again, Defcon tends to be much more serious about the entire network than most cons... that last one I went to had some dudes who volunteered to set up the wifi, and some how they thought that a 700 person con would be perfectly served by a single /24 subnet, plus all but one AP in repeater mode instead of separate networks, so everyone got to share one theoretical 54mbit AP.

During the meanwhile ...

People using standard UN*X tools have been doing the exact same things over the 'net for, oh, I don't know, with the exception of voice & video, 35+ years? And 25+ for voice?[1] Probably around 22 years for video?[2]

This isn't new, people. The only new thing is bandwidth becoming ubiquitous. The fact that IBM wasn't ready to give a presentation is, to me, symptomatic of the extreme lack of RealWorld(tm) experience in the children running current engineering groups.

[1] Look up how Network Equipment Technologies IDNX (and peripherals) worked, and how easy it was to run VOIP using standard telco equipment between their systems, the telco, & the Internet at large[4], with a little help from Comdesign[3]. In 1984.

[2] NET was streaming video over the 'net in 1987 ... in real time[4].

[3] Comdesign itself was NET-spawned.

[4] While Microsoft wasn't aware of it[5], I *KNOW* that IBM knew about it, because my team at NET built most of IBM's internal world-wide WAN in the mid-late '80s ...

[5] Microsoft was oblivious to the concept of interconnected WANs until roughly 1997 ...

Wanted ... New Blood and Vital Talent *

Microsoft and IBM facing off against each other is a bit like, well a lot like going to see an old masters tennis tournament ....... well past their prime but hanging on for the money and perks.

* Although in their fields of play that would be just as much Viral and Virulent too.