~ INSIDER INDEX ~

This is an update on our continuing efforts to assist in the coordination of demos worldwide.

First off, to reduce confusion, we will be phasing out the term "Demo" as it relates to our service offerings.

By November 1st or so, Consulting Engineering and Network Operations will be supporting two services against which you can do demos, in addition to Production. These services will be known as Export and Event.

The Export service is designed to primarily support the needs of WebTV and Microsoft personnel worldwide, as well as those select partners whom we have chosen to seed with WebTV units.

The Export service will support the 40-bit (export-grade) encrypted client.

Export will run a stable service build, typically being updated within a week or two of a service upgrade being rolled out to Production (NOT ASG or BSG, but rather standard Production).

Export is not designed to be cutting-edge; rather, it is designed to be a stable environment, separate from the standard Production environment, which gives our brethren worldwide a level of comfort when they are doing a demo.

The Event service is designed to support the need to demonstrate newer, pre-Production services. We've had countless problems and conflicts over time in terms of choosing a service against which to demo- sometimes it's been Daily, sometimes Weekly, other times Personal services. Ideally, once Event is created, it will be used for ALL pre-Production demos, alleviating the need to impact Phil's group by asking them to keep a given service stable. Event will be used for trade shows, executive demos, company meetings, high-level sales calls, etc. We will be also able to better control things like TV EPG listings, Ad Sales products, TVML demos, etc.

Close coordination between CE (primarily Michael Fride) and NetOps (primarily Dave Mack and Graham Orndorff) will ensure that both services run the proper service revision, as well as offer proper client software upgrades.

This coordination will alleviate things like forced or incorrect client upgrades, wrong service revs, etc. We will also be creating a demofolk alias, for notification of critical demos.

Michael Fride has also created a Web page at http://webhost-1/dna/demonstration.schedule.html ; interested parties are encouraged to check the page out to see what's coming up.

For the time being, Export will continue to run as a stand-alone service, while Event will exist merely on paper. In the 8 weeks or so beginning (roughly) September 1st, Graham and others will be creating an entirely new service cluster, located (conveniently! :-) at 1250 Charleston, directly next door to the new CE lab. This new service cluster will support a BUNCH of new services, including Springboard and other trials; most likely, Export and Event will simply be two of these.

This service cluster will also be separate from the standard Production network environment, enabling us to schedule downtime independently of regularly-scheduled Production downtime.

HOWEVER, if you have a need to do a demo that takes place during regularly scheduled downtime (0100-0400 Pacific Time, 0900-1200 Zulu), you must provide the God of Networks (Bill Yundt) *60* days notice.

Note that I mentioned that Event will exist merely on paper for the time being. Why? Because Etude is alive and well on Production, and is quite stable. I don't forsee any short-term need to demo against Etude-1, so all demos for now can run against Production.

Once it is finally decided that Funk is stable enough to demo against (which actually means Steve shows it at a company meeting, then everyone clamors to show stuff :-), Event will become necessary. If Funk is ready for demos prior to Event being ready to support it, we'll have a workaround ready.