Re: [802SEC] Evaluation of a Wireless LAN Bridge for Interconnecting Meeting Facilities in Albuquerque
Paying a vendor to demo a product that they are asking us to buy makes
little sense. When I test drive a car, no matter how expensive the
car, I am not asked to pay for the test drive.
I think that our networking service provider should foot the bill
for this demo, since
A) we are paying them richly for their services
B) they recomended this equipment
C) we have already suffered a great inconvenience by having to switch
the meeting room assignments at this venue because they couldn't
resolve the "severe networking problems".
D) we have no guarantee that the equipment or the resulting network
will serve our needs.
I am increasingly unhappy with the networking services arrangements.
We are paying top dollar while continuously suffering inconvenience and
added expense because of the provider's failures to plan adequately.
In my opinion, the service is F.A.R. from ideal.
Howard Frazier
Rigsbee, Everett O wrote:
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> Dear Colleagues, As you are no doubt aware, we will be in two separate meeting facilities for our Albuquerque meeting: the Hyatt Regency Albuquerque and the Albuquerque Convention Center. In order to be able to support our preferred On-Site Network facilities, it is necessary to have a high speed network interconnection between the networks of the two structures. Since providing a fiber or wired link between the two sites would required buried cables and >$20K in labor, we looked for another smarter alternative. On recommendation from IDEAL Technologies, our On-Site Network Services provider, we have selected a Wireless LAN Bridge product that will provide a 100 Mb/s full-duplex interconnection capability for us and have arranged for an evaluation of this product for the week of our session. The provider will install and demonstrate the use of their product during the week in exchange for the basic travel expenses of their engineer, who will install, configure, and de
mo!
> nstrate use and performance of the product during the week. Such travel expenses will not exceed $2K for the week (we are providing a comp hotel room as we do for the IDEAL folks).
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> Since several more of our future venues will also require hi-speed inter-building connections, we are planning that if this product passes the evaluation and is demonstrated to truly meet our needs, that we shall recommend that we purchase this product for use at our future split-venues (e.g. Vancouver - Jan 2004, Portland - July 2004, San Antonio - Nov 2004, Vancouver - Nov 2005). The price to acquire this product should we choose to do so is ~$16K which is a little over $3K/meeting for these facility. Since we pay ~$7.5K for 4 T1s (~6Mb/s) to go out to the Internet, this seems to be a fairly reasonable price. We do expect that even in some of our future single-venue sessions (e.g. Orlando, Atlanta, San Francisco) that it will be advantageous to be able to set-up a hi-speed wireless link to interconnect remote points when we need to.
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> I will be providing a very brief announcement of the status of this evaluation test at the SEC meeting on Monday morning. We will also provide a recommendation of any resultant actions with respect to this test for the closing SEC meeting.
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> Let me know if you have any further questions. Detailed information on the specific product used will be available at the meeting for your review.
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> Thanx, Buzz
> Dr. Everett O. (Buzz) Rigsbee
> Boeing - SSG
> PO Box 3707, M/S: 7M-FM
> Seattle, WA 98124-2207
> (425) 865-2443 Fx: (425) 865-6721
> everett.o.rigsbee@boeing.com
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