Interop is an annual

information technology Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...

conference organised by Informa PLC. Founded in 1986, the event takes place in the US and

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

(

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

) each year. Interop promotes interoperability and openness, beginning with IP networks and continuing in today's emerging

cloud computing Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

era.

Founding

In August 1986 the

Internet Architecture Board The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) is a committee of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and an advisory body of the Internet Society (ISOC). Its responsibilities include architectural oversight of IETF activities, Internet Standards ...

(IAB) held the first TCP/IP Vendors Workshop in

Monterey, California Monterey ( ; ) is a city situated on the southern edge of Monterey Bay, on the Central Coast (California), Central Coast of California. Located in Monterey County, California, Monterey County, the city occupies a land area of and recorded a popu ...

. This event later became Interop. The conference was founded by Dan Lynch, an early Internet activist. From the beginning, large corporations, such as IBM and DEC, attended the meeting. The Las Vegas International Telecoms Show is called "the granddaddy of networking shows" because it was created in 1986, a decade before the technology and internet bubble that made it a success.

Internet Toaster

At the 1989 Interop show, Dan Lynch, Interop president, promised

John Romkey John Romkey is an American computer scientist who along with Donald W. Gillies co-developed MIT PC/IP, the first TCP/IP stack in the industry for MS-DOS on the IBM PCTCP/IP in 1983 while at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1986, Romke ...

star billing if he designed an internet interface for a toaster. At the 1990 Interop show, John Romkey and his friend Simon Hackett debuted a ''

Sunbeam A sunbeam, in meteorological optics, is a lightbeam, beam of sunlight that appears to radiate from the position of the Sun. Shining through openings in clouds or between other objects such as mountains and buildings, these beams of light scatter ...

Deluxe Automatic Radiant Control

Toaster A toaster is a small electric appliance that uses radiant heat to brown sliced bread into toast, the color caused by the Maillard reaction. It typically consists of one or more slots into which bread is inserted, and heating elements, o ...

'' connected to the Internet with

TCP/IP network The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

ing, and controlled with a

Simple Network Management Protocol Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and for modifying that information to change device behavior. Devices that typically su ...

(SNMP)

Management Information Base A management information base (MIB) is a database used for managing the entities in a communication network. Most often associated with the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), the term is also used more generically in contexts such as in ...

(MIB). The internet interface had one remote control, to turn the power on and off, and the power duration controlled the darkness of the toast. Local control by a human being was still needed to insert the bread. At the 1990 Interop show, a small robotic crane, remotely controlled through the internet, picked up a slice of bread and dropped it into the toaster slot.

Dot-com bubble

In 2001, Interop attendance reached a peak with 61,000 visitors, just before the bursting of this Dot-com bubble, which resulted in a major stock market crash for this sector. The 2001 event was marked by innovation, and among the major telecom providers, the rivalry between

Juniper Networks Juniper Networks, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company develops and markets networking products, including Router (computing), routers, Network switch, switches, network management so ...

and

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...

in the Terabit router market, while the so-called "alternative" operators, such as KPNQwest,

Global Crossing Global Crossing Limited was a telecommunications company that provided computer networking services and operated a tier 1 carrier. It maintained a large backbone network and offered peering, virtual private networks, leased lines, audio and vid ...

and Carrier, launched revolutionary offerings in the enterprise market. After the crash of 2002, the fever subsided. The 2004 edition in Las Vegas brought together less than 300 exhibitors. The following editions saw a recovery. The organizer of the 2013 edition hoped to increase the number of visitors from 18,000 in 2012 to 20,000 with the presence of 500 suppliers.

References

Computer conferences Las Vegas Valley conventions and trade shows Informa brands {{ict-company-stub