Last year, the SDN & OpenFlow World Congress was about protocols; this year it was about implementation, as you can see from our headlines at the show:

• NFV Shows Signs of Life at SDN & OpenFlow World Congress
• NFV: One Year Later, the Real Work Begins
• Cisco Wants SDN to Liquefy the Radio Access Network
• SDN & OpenFlow World Congress: Carriers Plot Their Courses to SDN
• Telefónica’s Set-Top Virtualization Is Almost Ready for Prime Time
• ONF Will Tackle SDN’s Northbound Interface
• SDN & OpenFlow World Congress 2013 – Event Preview

More than 700 attendees convened in Bad Homburg, Germany, for the event, which appears to have become an annual fixture on the software-defined networking (SDN) calendar.

We'll close our coverage of the event by showing what it all looked like:

[caption id="attachment_10959" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The EANTC showcase. It’ll look better after it’s all set up.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_10958" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Part of the exhibit hall, which was bustling even late on Day 2.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_10961" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Conference days are measured out in coffee cups.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_10962" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Robert Jones of Layer123 kicked off the conference by naming all 700 delegates.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_10964" align="aligncenter" width="600"] A rapt audience arrives bright and early for the OpenFlow workshop that comprised Day 1.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_10965" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Hey! I know that guy![/caption]

[caption id="attachment_10966" align="aligncenter" width="600"] See? Much better! EANTC, occupying a raised stage adjacent to the main exhibit area, touted the results of its first set of NFV tests, run on gear from Huawei, Metaswitch, and Procera.[/caption]