News & Events

No Time for Network Downtime at RSNA’s Annual Meeting in Chicago (Dec. 1-8th)

The Critical Role of Internet Connectivity & Data Services Supporting More than 700 Technical Exhibits at the World’s Largest Medical Assembly

Chicago, Ill. - December 2, 2008 – On Sunday, Nov. 30, the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) and more than 700 exhibitors welcomed nearly 70,000 attendees to their Annual Meeting at McCormick Place in Chicago. During the six days of educational programming and exhibition, the Internet will play a key role in enabling the delivery of several world-wide webcasts, on-line product demonstrations for exhibitors, 300 physician refresher courses, the presentation of more than 1,700 scientific papers and email access for the tens of thousands of physicians and health care professionals who need to stay connected to their offices and patients. Supporting all this activity is a Gigabit Ethernet network that is exclusively designed, erected and monitored for RSNA’s one week show. INOC, a 24x7 Network Operations Center (NOC) monitoring and reporting solutions provider, actively monitors the facility-wide network they designed, tested and deployed to ensure all the applications and services are being delivered at the highest availability possible to attendees and exhibitors.
“The reliability of the network supporting the assembly’s activities is critical,” says Steve Drew, assistant executive director of RSNA. “This year, we have expanded the technical exhibition into an additional hall and are introducing myRSNA, a web portal, that allows participants to capture their session notes on their personal notebook computers and more effectively collaborate on the web during the conference. We can confidently launch these new technical resources because INOC provides the expertise we need and delivers 100% availability and uptime on our temporary show network.”
The RSNA network (RSNAnet) spans 120 network closets and is built with Gigabit Ethernet technology. Each year, multiple vendors sponsor RSNAnet by providing equipment. This year, INOC obtained equipment from Juniper, Extreme, Fortinet, and Blue Coat.
“RSNAnet’s infrastructure design is reviewed every year to ensure that it can deliver the high availability and performance needed for RSNA’s annual meeting,” says Prasad Ravi, chief executive officer at INOC. “Top-notch technology allows INOC to deploy a very high performing network that supports the unique needs of RSNA.”
Before the show begins, INOC designs and builds the network infrastructure at a remote location and tests each connection before the equipment is installed at the convention facility. Hot staging helps INOC identify and eliminate potential problems in advance and accelerates problem resolution during the show. INOC also builds a temporary NOC at the convention facility to monitor and manage the network during the day; the INOC NOC in Madison, Wis. takes over during the night.
INOC uses its proprietary software and reporting tool, iMonitor, and implements detailed processes and procedures for monitoring and managing the network 24x7 to ensure high availability and uptime.