Eyewitness Accounts
“We had a large plasma screen in the iLabs {at Networld+Interop] intended to demonstrate high rate HDTV over I2. We came in Tuesday morning and were preparing for the first day of the show when word came in about the initial plane crash into the towers. Our I2 Lead, Roy Hockett was able to switch the stream to a CNN broadcast from UMich. We began attracting exhibitors to the display even before the showfloor opened. Once the attendees were on the floor, the crowd had grown to well over a hundred.
“By this point, three things had happened. The crowds around the one display had grown so large as to constitute a fire hazard, all the major news web sites had completely melted down, and CNN was being multicast from several sources. We then started loading multicast tools on every PC in the NOC, from the one driving the large video wall to people's individual laptops. By 10:30 (about half an hour after the floor opened) we had at least 3 large displays as well as a number of normal monitors turned out towards the plexiglass walls.
“Soon after, we had a good number of exhibitors come and ask how to get "the CNN viewer software".
Jim Martin, <jrm@nortelnetworks.com>
“More than 1,000 copies of StreamPlayerII, our multicast MPEG viewer, were downloaded or handed out on disk between 9/11 and 9/12. We normally average 20 to 100 per day.”
Rich Mavrogeanes <rmavro@vbrick.com>