5:15 PM -- Times are changing at Interop. Matthew Quint of Quint Public Relations says the press/analyst roster has very few people who say they cover LANs or chips, two staples of the days when the show had a "+" in its name.

Quint found ample numbers of folk to interview his semiconductor clients. But he says it's not like the old days, when Interop news coverage was heavily focused on "under the hood" technology, especially chips. Media attending Interop this year say they're covering applications architectures and various types of "convergence." Oh, and wireless. Lots of people covering wireless.

It's just a sign of how network-industry marketing and media have changed. Apparently, speeds and port densities don't grab the enterprise-networking headlines these days, at least not on the wireline side. You have to wonder how much the rise of online journalism and blogs -- as opposed to the classic once-a-week trade paper -- has to do with that.

Neither Quint nor I is saying that's a bad thing, by the way.

— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading