Wired, ready and able to keep pace with info age

A departing Reno convention left behind a bundle of joy: a wealth of fiber optic cabling that Reno Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority can troll to reel in a class of exhibitors the center couldn't serve before.

"We redeployed our sales team to Silicon Valley," says Knud Svendsen, vice president of sales and marketing. The quarry: High-tech companies and shows that previously went to venues such as San Jose's Moscone Convention Center. New opportunities include other West Coast hubs of technology as well.

"It definitely strengthens our competitive position," Svendsen says. "Now the convention can accommodate optical fiber, networking and wi-fi conventions. The list is broad."

SuperComputing, which conducted its initial convention in Reno in 1988 with 27 exhibitors and 245 attendees, last week drew 314 exhibitors and more than 9,000 attendees. More than $1 billion worth of equipment filled the floor.

And to serve the show, one of the most powerful and connected networks in the world SCinet was installed in the Reno-Sparks Convention Center.

It wasn't easy, says Jackie Kern, SCinet committee chair of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Required: More than 80 miles of fiber optic cable. SCinet is equivalent to 140,000 cable modems running into your house at one time, Kern says.

But the Reno-Sparks Convention Center lacked connectivity.

"SCinet has always been in a city that had conduit in place," says Kern. "This one had no fiber cable in the building. Elsewhere we just needed to enhance, not install."

The challenge began when the team discovered that the conduit under the adjoining street had been crushed.

"Getting them to let us cut Virginia Street was a big deal," she recalls. "It was done in September. We had to wait for Street Vibrations to be over."

Next, that super cable needed to connect to a Level3 POP (Point of Presence). Two were tapped, located as much as eight miles away.

"It was a jigsaw puzzle to find the path," says Kern.

Five years ago, when the convention chose a city, she adds, networking wasn't a consideration in the selection of a venue. Now, it's almost as important as the number of hotel rooms.

With the conclusion of the event, SCinet took back 60 miles of the fiber optic cable for at other conference venues. But left 20 miles in place.

"We leave it because we're here to help communities become better computing societies," says Kern.

Leading the SCinet team were engineers from the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, which has technical ties to the University of Nevada, Reno.

But the engineers couldn't have done it without the help of the Nevada System for Higher Education to install the technology locally, says Edwin Smith, project manager at CENIC.

A big benefit of the fiber optics installation: The convention center can accommodate groups needing greater bandwidth.

"Now it could support an interactive gaming convention," says Kern. "Who could have predicted that game players use more bandwidth than many a business?"

At the SuperComputing convention, however, exhibitors used the capacity to demonstrate applications, streamed live from their company headquarters back east or around the world.

The annual convention is sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Association of Computing Machinery.

Organizers said they were heartened by the number of Native American students who visited exhibits.

"In IT information technology they are the most under-represented population. Outreach efforts are also made to include other IT minority groups such as Hispanics, Africans and women," says Dave Cooper, who helped oversee exhibits and works as an affiliate with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

While it feels good to be socially responsible, Cooper says the real rush is seeing the SuperComputing city rise in just a week.

"This is a glimpse of the future," he says. "What you see here will be on your desktop in 10 years."