Interop
lorenetworkingevents
The trade show that began as a TCP/IP interoperability demonstration and became the industry's proving ground.
Its founding idea was that vendors would connect their equipment to one live network on the show floor, in public, where failure was visible. That is a genuinely uncomfortable proposition for a vendor and it is why the event mattered: buyers could see interoperation rather than read about it. The show hall network became a standing demonstration that TCP/IP worked between competitors, which no specification and no consortium had managed to establish.
Also known as: tcp/ip interoperability conference, networld interop