The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers is hosting a Jeopardy-style competition at next month's Cable-Tec Expo in Atlanta that will test the Internet Protocol knowledge of nine industry professionals.
The SCTE IP Challenge, sponsored by Cisco Systems, will be held Nov. 17 from 4-7 p.m. on the show's last day. The nine semifinalists -- engineers and operations professionals representing seven different cable system operators and vendors -- will compete for the crown based on questions and hands-on activities about IP networking and IPv6 topics.
More than 90 SCTE members, ranging from students to senior executives, participated in the first annual tournament's three online qualifying rounds.
"The diversity of our IP Challenge semifinalists shows that IP knowledge is strong in every corner of the cable telecommunications industry," said Steve Harris, SCTE's senior director of advanced network technologies program development, who created the IP Challenge. "We're looking forward to a tournament that will combine the camaraderie and desire to excel that are characteristic of cable's engineering and operations workforce."
The winner will receive a trophy, one full conference pass to Cisco Live, and one full conference pass to SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2012. All of the nine semifinalists receives a full conference pass for this year's Expo, as well as a Cisco CCNA exam voucher and a framed award certificate.
In addition, all participants in the virtual IP Challenge qualifying rounds will be entered in a raffle to win one of 10 CCNA1 courses, or a set of Cisco CCNA library books.
Cable-Tec Expo is scheduled to run Nov. 15-17 at Atlanta's Georgia World Congress Center.
The semifinalist contestants are:
* Omar Smaidy, systems engineer, Buckeye CableSystem
* Kevin Bland, network engineer/operations, Charter Communications
* Nick Williams, headend engineer, Comcast
* Chris Gotstein, plant manager, Niagara Community TV Cooperative
* Scott Morris, chief technologist, Nova Datacom
* Jason Byrd, system support engineer III, Suddenlink Communications
* Verlo Levels, system support engineer, Suddenlink
* Steven Callahan, senior network engineer, Time Warner Cable
* Christopher Fox, maintenance technician, Time Warner Cable
Alternates are: Roger Florentino of Suddenlink; Gregg Miller of Comcast; and Trevor Hindson of Hill Associates.
