Gossip

Super-Duper Wireless Mesh flops at Von Fall

It was a proud moment for Cyrus Irani, senior VP of business development at Strix Systems: the ultimate challenge had been offered and accepted. Strix would provide its wireless Mesh to enable voice over IP for VON Fall. And today is the day. And are the VON delegates happy?

Our Sniffer was in the Boston venue earlier, trying to set up an IP phone call. Well, that is what VON is all about - Voice Over Network, right? And the story is official: "Fall 2004 VON Conference Will Employ Strix Systems' Wireless Network" it said. Enjoy? Sniffer couldn't connect.

Surely, impossible! "Wireless IP solutions are enabling a new infrastructure for the enterprise which is why we are continually interested in their development," said Jeff Pulver, president and CEO of pulver.com, Inc. "Strix's participation in this year's conference as the wireless provider illustrates just how significant we feel the rise of mesh networking can be to IP communications."

Your Sniffer overheard a rather less fulsome conversation between Pulver and another delegate. "It's a test," confessed Pulver. "It's more of a test than Strix will say in their publicity, frankly."

The Hunky Mouse discovered that there was, fortunately, a permanent WLAN attached to the conference centre in Boston. That enabled him to call home.

Meanwhile, unknown to the delegates, another, less ostentatiously high tech mesh network was also available to the Pulver followers: Pulver bought a LocustWorld Mesh a couple of months ago, after the abject failure of the wireless LAN at VON Europe.

But last night, VON technical staff informed Pulver that the Strix network was "nearly working" and so the LocustWorld mesh was left on ice, so to speak.

What went wrong? No response as yet from Cyrus and his lads, but from the back room, this report: "Proxy servers, firewalls, radius servers - and techies always think that the clever idea that they have not tried will work first time, and when it does not they think that the one thing that is the immediately visible issue is the only thing they need to fix."

Rumours that Strix paid for the advertising opportunity afforded by this starring role in Boston were not confirmed nor denied by either Pulver or Irani. Your Sniffer understands, however, that neither side is exactly thrilled by the result ...