Interop promotes interoperability and openness, beginning with IP networks and continuing in today's emerging cloud computing era.
[6] At the 1990 Interop show, John Romkey and his friend Simon Hackett[7] debuted a Sunbeam Deluxe Automatic Radiant Control Toaster[8] connected to the Internet with TCP/IP networking, and controlled with a Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) Management Information Base (MIB).
At the 1990 Interop show, a small robotic crane, remotely controlled through the internet, picked up a slice of bread and dropped it into the toaster slot.
[citation needed] In 2001, Interop attendance reached a peak with 61,000 visitors, just before the bursting of this Dot-com bubble, which resulted in a major stock market crash for this sector.
The 2001 event was marked by innovation, and among the major telecom providers, the rivalry between Juniper Networks and Cisco Systems in the Terabit router market, while the so-called "alternative" operators, such as KPNQwest, Global Crossing and Carrier, launched revolutionary offerings in the enterprise market.