TechCrunch50 Had World Wide Web And thereupon Some. Mariette Systems FTW.

Technology conferences are supposed to have World Wide Web. Most don’t. In fact, audiences are trained to be grateful for even a trickle of bandwidth. possibly ample to get off a Tweet or two. But uploading photos and videos is something that you do later, after the event is by. considering it can take days.

It’s been a real problem for us by the years. We’ve thrown money at the problem. We’ve tried new vendors and technologies. We’ve prayed. And cursed. I’ve offered vendors a big wet kiss of a post on TechCrunch whether they could get it right. They never have.

Last year we had a full day Net outage at TechCrunch50, and it wasn’t better on day 2. The only good thing about an World Wide Web outage is that most attendees can’t blog or tweet about it, since they can’t get on the Web.

Giving 2,000 hard core Net users simultaneous access from a separate location is very, very hard. I’ve seen grown men cry when they tried and floped.

This year, though, WOW. There was more World Wide Web at TechCrunch50 than you could shake a stick at. And for that, Mariette Systems gets that big wet kiss I promised.

The team: Ernie Mariette, Cliff Skolnick and Tim Pozer. They came in, brought bandwidth (100 Mbps line-of-site microwave link from WiLine and 30 Mbps from Telekenex),

hooked it into a BSD router and distributed it all through the building via more than 100 Cisco switches and 28 wifi access points. There were hundreds of ethernet connections (and capability strips) at attendee tables. Plus committed bandwith to Ustream, the DemoPit area and the main stage. And, overall, lots of very happy attendees.

There were more than 1,200 simultaneous connections at peak points, and bursts of up to 88 Mbps inbound bandwidth usage. But no one was ever cut back. And I noticed multiple citizens in the audience watching the live Ustream feed on their laptops. Others were watching the US Open livestream. In other words, the audience was totally wasting bandwidth. And it was wonderful.

In fact, I was a little disappointed that the audience folded to prepare our World Wide Web fail. They tried their best, and were found wanting.

Thanks very much, Mariette Systems. We owe you. And we love you. Keep doing Apple’s WWDC and other huge events, but keep your calendar clear for our conferences, too. I wouldn’t want to work with anyone else.

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