ManageEngine continues our weekly blog series called Talk to ME Tuesday. Each week we discuss interesting topics from the world of technology with you, the people that live and breathe it everyday.

One of the coolest features at Interop is the Network Operations Center or NOC, the world’s largest temporary network that runs all the network operations for the show. It’s a completely voluntary testing and education environment that many want to join because it’s purposely loaded with the latest and greatest equipment.

Since the NOC has got so much cool equipment and it’s under such an intense testing environment, I always make a point of getting a tour of the NOC whenever I’m at Interop. This year I got a tour from Brian Chee of University of Hawaii SOEST (@adventlab) and also a short introduction from Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (@padresj) of the TheTechStop.net.

Chee took me around the NOC, the testing equipment, and one of the racks on the show floor. He talks about looking for problems, keeping 10 Gigabit fiber really healthy, and his absolute love of load balancers and redundancy.

Compare this video from my tour last year of Interop’s Network Operations Center.