Loading... May 9th, 2006

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I headed down to the Los Angeles Convention Center yesterday to pick up my media badge for the show. Construction workers were streaming across the place like Tom Cruise to a camera.

I have been to plenty of E3 shows. Hey, I even remember the shows in "Hotlanta", but I'm never quite prepared for how much is built and how fast it goes up. The show is enormous, filling the South and West Halls of the convention center as well as the "basement" hall, Kentia Hall, where you can often find wacky and sometimes wonderful products.

Forget about the sheer number of computers and screens at the show for a minute and imagine the amount of networking required. Are you imagining? Think bigger...even bigger.

"There is enough horsepower to run several cities. There are over 50 miles of Gigabit Fiber and Ethernet connections throughout 25 IDF locations. E3 requires 87 separate, custom, isolated networks INSIDE the building to provide 4200 fully route-able networks, over 2000 more translated networks to the Internet and 1000 non-routable testing and secure-private networks. This provides a capacity in excess of 7200 devices with Internet Connectivity. The E3 Network is monitored and managed 24x7 via Redundant, Fault Tolerant Monitoring Systems in the on-site Network Operations Center (NOC) and also via the Main showNets NOC in Atlanta, GA. A small Army of showNets technicians runs in excess of 6 miles of custom, temporary, Ethernet Cable throughout the LACC, providing downstream connectivity from showNets designed customer LAN's to end stations in the booths."

Most of the TenTonHammer.com crew is making the pilgrimage to pick up their "Golden Tickets", also known as E3 Early Access Badges today.

I was going through my preparation work for my assignments tomorrow and booyah, do I have a fantastic day. I'll be taking a look at Warhammer Online, Pirates of the Caribbean and Hellgate: London. What a way to start the show.

The rest of editors also have great days lined up. At a minimum we will have the following for you tomorrow;

Warhammer Online Pirates of the Caribbean Hellgate: London EVE Online Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Dungeons and Dragons Online Lord of the Rings Online World of Warcraft Tabula Rasa Atriarch

Of course, we will have our booth babe and venue photos posted for your perusing pleasure. I will be updating the Loading... Blog throughout the day with little snippets as time permits. Check in, post your comments and throw questions my way. I'll do my best to answer them. Consider me your eyes and ears at the show.

Questions, comments, something or someone you want me to interrogate at E3? Let me know...

Looking for a place that your guild can call home that doesn't run gold ads? Look no further than GuildPortal.com.

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As always, thanks for visiting TenTonHammer.com,
-- John "Boomjack" Hoskin