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Intel fails vital benchmark in Munich! Horror! Shock!

Intel was pretty proud of having wired up the convention centre here in Munich with not one, but two varieties of wireless networking - both 11a and 11b - WiFi and WiFi5. Excellent ... or was it? we turned Sniffer loose ...

At the party after the second big Intel Developer Forum, Intel tongues were loosened. Boasting occurred: "The connectivity here is superb!" said senior executives, draining their Pilsener. Well, there's a benchmark for one-company developer conventions. It was set last year at the Novell 2001 BrainShare conference in Salt Lake City - an event Sniffer attended.

Novell gave the franchise to Enterasys. The company not only makes its own (Lucent-based) wireless LAN gear, but it also installs networks - wired, as well as wireless.

Every meeting room in the Salt Palace in downtown Salt Lake City was unwired. Every lobby was "live" with WiFi. Every auditorium, however big, had full Internet access. And best of all, all the delegate hotels - with one exception, the Hilton, had full Internet access in all rooms - an access point was positioned outside the windows, shining into the accommodation with a pretty good signal. So good, in fact, that Sniffer's Hilton room, about 50 metres across the road from a hotel that was "lit" had marginal reception. The Hilton, somewhat stuffily, said that it would allow Enterasys networks to pay them twelve thousand pounds for the privilege of providing this free service to guests ...

So it was quite rude of The Boss, Sniffer felt, to stand up in a briefing session with Intel's charming CTO, Pat Gelsinger, and ask: "Why is this briefing room not wireless?" He might have equally accurately mentioned that none of the hotel rooms has Internet access, either.

But Sniffer has to give Gelsinger full marks. "I don't know," he said. "I'm sorry!"

Advice to the learned: Intel, you make the gear. Don't install it yourself; get someone who knows how to ...