RE: [saml-dev] SAML Interop Prep for Catalyst Europe

I am 
available on Monday 9 September at 12PM (EST).

Best,

Dee

-----Original Message-----
From: Don Bowen 
[mailto:]
Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2002 7:53 
PM
To: 
Subject: [saml-dev] 
SAML Interop Prep for Catalyst Europe

Well, it is hard for 
me to believe it, but most of us will be leaving for Munich in a little more 
than 2 weeks! Wow. 

This, in my opinion, will be at least as challenging as the last one in SF. 

- We have less time 
- Many, if not all, of the products have probably 
changed (some significantly) 
- Language and power sources are quite a bit 
different :-) 
- We won't have easy access to local offices ;-) 

So, this is an attempt to get us discussing what we need to consider, prepare 
and do over the next two weeks. 

Here are the details about networking at the hotel we will be staying at 
(from Jason Lewis): 

Internet connectivity: ISDN in every room (bedroom and meeting room) - of 
course you will need an ISDN modem that is 
compatible with European 
standards. You will also need an account with an ISP with a POP in Munich. I've 
been told that 
you will get approximately 128 kbit/s, but the 
performance is variable. Burton will not be providing wireless networking in 

Munich - we couldn't get Deutsche Telekom to bring anything big enough 
into the hotel. Each time you make a connection to 
the Internet, you 
will be charged a 3 Euro dialing fee so you will be better off keeping the 
connection live all day. UUNET and 
PSINET both provide accounts with 
unlimited access for a flat monthly rate. Both ISPs have Munich POPs. 

He also had this to say about equipment: 

If you need me to provide any kind of equipment, I need to know by this 
Friday. I have an absolute hard deadline here since 
we have to ship 
everything on Monday. If we don't make this window, there is a CompUSA-like 
store in Munich that carries 
most networking gear and you can buy 
equipment there. 

I will be happy to provide a hub and cables for a LAN, but don't expect 
Internet connectivity for every system on the LAN. It is 
possible to 
share an ISDN connection, but it just doesn't work very well. 

I don't think we need internet connectivity because I don't think it is worth 
the hassle. Is this going to be a problem for anyone? I would like him to 
provide 2 8-port switches. Do you think that will be enough? I think we should 
all bring long cables for our gear. 

I would like to know what each of you is planning to bring in terms of 
equipment. I know for Sun, we are going to use laptops and hopefully monitors 
that will be used in the Sun booth the next night. Obviously laptop monitors are 
not the best, but they seem acceptable to me and I can understand why people 
would not want to ship big monitors. Given the physical logistics I believe 
laptops will suffice. Thoughts? 

We will need certs from a CA so if Irving is going to reenact his service 
from Catalyst USA that would be great. We will also need a DNS server or maybe 
we just get by with local hosts files. I'm leaning toward the latter, but if 
someone wants to volunteer to provide what RSA did last time please speak up. I 
believe we should use the same IP address assignments that we did in SF. 

Prateek, we should have all vendors review the last copy of the document we 
used in SF and verify that they will still comply with everything in it. 

Obviously we won't have any dry runs this time so it will be important for 
all of us to be ready to start testing on Monday morning 9/23. I asked Phil 
Schacter about whether we needed to be ready to do a press briefing on Tuesday 
morning and he said that nothing is currently planned. 

This email is not meant to be exhaustive, just to get the discussions 
started. I would like to suggest that we have a conference call early next week, 
say Monday or Tuesday at 12pm EDT/11am CDT/9am PDT. Alternatively, we could 
shoot for 5pm EDT/4pm CDT/2pm PDT - same days. Scheduling all of us will be 
difficult, but if we can get representation from most companies for a specific 
time slot we should do it. 

It would be nice to have replies to this from at least one representative for 
each of the 8 vendors to say when they would like to have the call, who will 
participate and how many lines they would need. 

Don;