“The networks at shows are complicated and messy, and companies are choosing AriMagnet to help clean that up.”
That, according Rich Mironov, vice president of marketing at AirMagnet of Mountain View, Calif., is why his company is entering a formal relationship with showNets of Alpharetta, Ga., a company that sets up the networks and provides technical services at conventions, events and tradeshows around North America.
showNets has previously used AirMagnet products for monitoring its show networks, putting them to work at MacWorld, LinuxWorld, and the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) this year. The company is expected to use a mix of the AirMagnet Distributed system and the company’s handheld units for monitoring at future shows.
AirMagnet itself has setup its distributed monitoring system at shows like Networld+Interop to monitor the WLAN traffic taking place throughout the show floor, working with other customers it has such as SmartCity Networks, which handles the network at the Las Vegas Convention Center and thus the Fall Comdex show.
“The challenge at these shows is vendors bring their own gear,” says Mironov. “This year we’ll see a lot more 802.11a and g — it becomes even more important to have management watch the whole spectrum.”
As an example of why this is important, Mironov told a tale of the last MacWorld show: “The new Mac laptops can be a station or an access point [on the WLAN]. Someone was wandering around causing interference with his Mac, moving from place to place — he was a mobile rogue, causing interference as he went around the Javits Center in New York. showNets went after him with a handheld, used as Geiger counter, and chased him down on the floor.”
