Students Network With Cisco's Special Olympics Web Site

Athletes are pouring into North Carolina from around the world for the1999 Special Olympics World Summer Games. The athletes will compete in 19 sports and their feats will be documented on the Internet for the world to see.

The official World Games Web site has been up for weeks. There is a lot of information already posted, but there is much more to come.Cisco's Mike Dilio carries networking equipment to sites around the Triangle, equipment that will route information from sports venues to the Web.

"We didN.C. State, where the athletics venue is, last Friday," Dilio says. "Today we're doing the aquatics venue atUNCand the media center in Cary."

Liz Bander is one of four volunteers fromSoutheast Raleigh High School'sCisco Networking Academy.

"I don't know what I'm going to be doing but I figure that they give it to me and if I don't know it, I'll learn it," Bander says.

Across the country, students like Liz will give up some vacation time to work the World Games. They would be considered experts already by many. Next week, they will work with a real network.

"It also gives them an opportunity to network in another sense, in the sense of meeting people in the profession and making contacts that may be important to them in the future," says Southeast Raleigh High School teacher Tom Knott.

More than 40 volunteers will run Cisco's network, putting scores for all of the events online and keeping the system running.