Re: Big Temporary Networks

[Jay Ashworth <jra () baylink com>]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Leo Bicknell" <bicknell () ufp org>

> I find more and more hotel networks are essentially unusable for
> parts of the day, conference or no. Of course, bring in any geek
> contingent with multiple devices and heavy usage patterns and the
> problems get worse.
>
> What I find most interesting is more often than not the problem
> appears to be an overloaded / undersized NAT/Captive portal/DNS
> Resolver system. Behaviors like existing connections working fine,
> but no new ones can be created (out of ports on the NAT?). While
> bandwidth is occasionally an issue, I've found an ssh tunnel out
> to some other end point solves the issues in 9 out of 10 cases.

Neither part of that surprises me.  :-}

I'm *almost* convinced not to NAT IPv4, so far.

> I wonder how many hotels upgrade their bandwidth but not the gateway,
> get a report that their DS-3/OC-3/Metro-E is only 25% used, and think
> all is well. Mean while half their clients can't connect to anything
> due to the gateway device.

That's an interesting question indeed.  The optimal solution here, of
course, would be for Worldcons -- which are planned 3-4 years in advance --
to get the right technical people in the loop with the property to see
when in the next 2 years (after a bid is confirmed) they plan to upgrade
the networking they have now... and make sure it will tolerate a "real" 
worst case.  The business case for the property, of course, is that
they're more salable to large technical conferences -- which makes them 
more money.  Question is, is it enough.

Or do I just overlay for the event.

Cheers
,-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra () baylink com
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