Gossip

Comdex organisers amazed to find more than 300 delegates?

Strange. Everybody was expecting 125,000 delegates to this year's mega-show, Comdex in Las Vegas. Everybody, it seems, except the people who set up a free WLAN service. They expected ... - well, guess?

According to several well-placed sources, the WLAN at Comdex has been a disaster. According to other sources, there's a simple explanation: "The problem, conference organizers say, was that demand for the free wireless service was far greater than anticipated."

"It's an unprecedented amount of usage," said Geoff Horne, a network engineer for Key3Media Group Inc., the conference's organizer, reports yet another source.

Uncanny agreement from a completely unrelated source quoting Horne: "organizers wanted to ensure a positive experience for users and thus limited the number of connections to about 300 users." Anyone who tried to connect after the 300 connections were taken were unable to do so until someone dropped out.

Everybody agrees that about 125,000 people were expected to attend the weeklong show.

Nobody has been able to explain why Horne expected only 300. Sniffer awaits further bulletins with eager anticipation.