Before the opening of the international conference SC17, entirely devoted to the topic of high-performance computing and everything related to it, there remains literally one day. This event will start on November 12, and the exhibition area will open one day later, on November 13. The venue is the Colorado Convention Center, the famous CCC (Colorado Convention Center), located in Denver, USA. Since the conference is dedicated to IT topics, and even high-performance solutions, it will require a temporary, but fast and reliable network. Last year at the SC16 in Salt Lake City, the presence of more than 11,000 participants required the laying of more than a hundred miles of optical fiber. Similar work is being done on these days, preceding the opening of SC17.

Usually the networks of this class are made stationary and laid in special cable channels under the floor or ceiling, or in walls, and the cables have appropriate dust and moisture protection. But this is an unacceptable luxury for an event that takes place in the same building only once. Therefore, the network on SC17 will also be temporary. More than 180 volunteers gathered in Denver to build SCinet, a network that will not only provide the conference with Internet access, but will also showcase the unique high-speed equipment brought by the conference participants. Although the network is temporary, its development took a whole year, and to prepare for SC17 the SCinet project participants started a month before the event began. Fiber-optic cables will be covered only with carpet covers and thin wood-fiber plates, and before the beginning of the exhibition they will completely take the blows of numerous bogies and loaders.

From this follows a simple fact: the issue of rapid repair is very acute, and the purchase of new fiber coils every year is a pleasure not from cheap. Therefore, SC17 extensively uses old and recycled cable lengths. Of the 84 coils, 24 have the status of "refurbished", and the survivors of this year's stretches are planned to be used on SC18 in Dallas. Before installation, the fiber is tested with an optical reflectometer (TDR), and for welding and fitting the connectors, a Swift F1 welding station.

Unfortunately, optical fiber, exceeding in all copper, is significantly inferior to the latter in the simplicity of repairing cable connections and requires rather high qualification. As the leaders of the "cable team" say, rarely when they manage without urgent repairs, and sometimes they have to work directly at the exhibition. In addition, on November 17, after the completion of SC17, the network will be dismantled in less than 24 hours, and in this process some of the cables will inevitably suffer. It remains to wish the creators of SCinet good luck and hope that the network will not fail this year too..