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NBC Aims For Stability Through Redundancy In Athens
Darren writes "With the Athens Olympics just 27 days away NBC is gearing up for a massive 1210 hours of coverage (that's enough to watch TV over 50 days of Olympics 24/7).
The infrastructure needed to provide such coverage is huge, and the potential for problems is significant. As a result NBC are taking all precautions possible and over the 17 days of competition they will utilize three satellite network linkups and three land-based connections to ensure they always have a connection.
The mind boggles at what it is all going to cost - but I'm sure their advertising revenue will make it worth their while."
The infrastructure needed to provide such coverage is huge and the potential for problems is significant.
Unlike the facilities for the Olympics themselves, the place is still a building site isn't it?
Will they eb covering the math competition?
Unknown host pong.
Just check out the Athens soccer stadium!
Do they have a redundant Athens standing by?
NBC is owned by GE, which in turn owns GE Energy. With the resent history of power outages on July 13 in Grece, I wonder how they back up against that?
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
This story just seems to be posted to drive traffic to a blog. Why do the Slashdot editors allow this?
The proper stories are posted at sportsillustrated.cnn.com (printer friendly) and computerworld.com (printer friendly) respectively. Click those links instead.
NBC's idea of redundancy might sound like a good one at first, but according to the Department of Redundancy Department, redundancy has its risks as well. First and foremost is the risk of a false sense of security. For example, if the satellite gets shot down, then their three links to the satellite won't be worth the paper they're printed on.
...because everyone will be watching hoping to be glued to their TV when/if a blackout or terrorist attack hits. There's no news like bad news, and nothing can replace the ego of an American who can say he/she "saw it as it happened".
(I don't think I will intentionally watch any of the Olympics, because I'll be out looking for a job and preparing for grad school.)
it's easy! afraid of losing a broadcast? simply submit a duplicate broadcast! if both get through, blame Taco!
I mean what the hell, it works for slashdot!
Death would be a mercy after that.
The networks generally lose millions on the olympic broadcasts - it's a prestige thing for them. Maybe they gain some small advantage in viewership for subsequent sports programming.
I guess you're not real big into sports then. Dosen't everybody know the olympics happen every 4 years? Winter olympics get 02, 06, summer gets 96, 00, 04, etc. (Que reply stating "You must be new here, slashdotters aren't into sports...")
Despite spending so much time & effort covering the games, they don't actually broadcast the vast majority of it!
NBC will have a couple hours of wrapup every day, and that will be it.
You forget that we are the Greeks.... Everything will be ready 5 minutes before the start of the olympics
I just loved this gem from the link in the article "NBC will be able to send live feeds from Greece to the U.S. over all six links at once or use them for separate transmissions." Hmmm...six identical high-speed digital transmissions of Marion Jones tumbling in ignominy - yeeesh, wot a waste of bandwidth!
Now here is an article about the design of the media center and its redundant systems that is more in tune with my ./er persona
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
I work for a major UK broadcaster's engineering department (shortly to be sold to Siemens :( ) and, believe me, 6 connections is not in the big league of broadcast redundancy. For The Scottish open last week we had 12 feeds (six main feeds, and reserve circuits for each) - distributed over a variety of paths and technologies (for risk-reduction.) (Good) Broadcasters take multiple redundancy very seriously.
Doesn't anyone remember the huge problems facing the Olympics this year due to extremely poor ticket sales (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=spo rtsNews&storyID=5657784)?
How will all of that coverage put a positive spin on the massive number of empty seats at each event?
you got your personal olympics blog linked on the front page of slashdot.
now go upstairs, your mom needs some help in the kitchen.
...if the power keeps going out every other day in Athens.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Linking to multible sattelite networks is all well and good, but what about electricity? Just last week Athens had a blackout due to overload in the electric grid. This situation will not improve during the games!
Guess they will have their own generators too.
Resale
My gripe with Olympics coverage in the US is that you never get to see any event which does not involve some US team/athlete. So I'm assuming that this would likely be 1200 something hours of US athletes-only fest. Entirely goes against the spirit of the Olympics itself.
I work in the bush leagues of broadcasting, and I can't wait until they surplus all that equipment. It's usually high end stuff that's perfectly good, but can't be sold as new. It won't go on eBay, probably, but if you like some of the small parts you see at the Olympics, start saving your pennies now.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
So NBC will have redundancy - so you won't miss a minute of your favourite American competitor! Most people I know joke about NBC's coverage of the Olympics - its laughable. They'll show an event, then when the American loses they'll cut to a new event.
Contrast this with CBC and BBC which cover entire events regardless of who wins or loses.
So those who get cable, time to watch CBC for _full_ coverage of the Olympics!
Note the 48,500 links for this search!
Seems like the Olympics has become like the UN: A good idea, which has been defiled by some of the people involved.
Pity, really.
I don't think i've watched since the Israeli 1972 Olympic Team was murdered in Munich
I think it's about time to give the Olympics another 2000-year hiatus. What started out as a revival of an ancient track and field meet has turned into a bloated overhyped monstrosity overshadowed by never-ending doping scandals.
Now if we can get them to use all that technolgy to broadcast the shooting sports. I'm getting a little tired of watching hours of Curling or rhythmic gymnastics.
Chip H.
I bet advertising revenues are at least a billion bucks.
This site says the 2002 Winter olympics took in over $700M. 2000 Summer took in over $900M.
Yeow.
The major network coverage of the Olympics stinks anyway. Endless fluff pieces about athletes, almost no coverage of anyone who is not from the US, and heaven forbid they spend time on anything but track, volleyball, swimming, diving and gymnastics (again especially if no americans figure for a gold) and tape delayed coverage. Last olympics I was lucky enough to have CBC coverage since I lived near Canada but no such luck now. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the sports that do get the airtime but the coverage is usually horrible for anyone who actually knows/cares about a given sport.
For example, the bicyling time trial last time was "The Lance Armstrong Show". I don't have anything against Lance but he didn't even win and there were lots of other good riders I would have liked to see. What little coverage was shown was poor and basically an expose about Lance's life. I wanted to see the event. If I wanted information about a rider there are plenty of ways to find out. (Yes I know why they do this but I don't have to like it)
Anyway I seriously doubt I'll be watching much of the Olympics. The coverage will be annoying and instead of seeing a variety of sports I'll be subjected to every qualifying round of the men's volleyball team. Ugh...
The even more impressive part is all of the coverage on the normal NBC affiliates will be in HD with 5.1 (!!) sound.
Now that's just sick! (and about time, NBC's HD coverage is the worse of the big 3)
Balancing three Satellite connections and three landlines is not such a big deal. With equipment like Israeli company Radware's LinkProof at both ends, the loss of one line would not be noticed. You can configure that equipment to aggregate all connections to multiply the bandwidth, including spreading VPN traffic across the lines, or just use the other lines as failover. These boxes are supposed to handle 10 connections and are very configurable and are veeeery configurable.
The same technology is available for smaller sites with their Linkproof Branch product.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
That's what they make UPSen and generators for. But seriously, while it's a given that the Olympics data centers and IT infrastructure would be backed by a fleet of trailer-mounted gennies, I wonder if they do have enough backup power in place at each venue to fully power lighting and such. That'll be a lot of of generators.
Homework:
loo?se|it'?s|the(ir|(y')?re)|you(r|'re)|a ?lot|r[ie]diculous|defin[ia]tely|(ir)?regardless
Nice!
Dude, you said "we...our".... you've had your man lopped off?
Doubtful. I'm straight, but I have enough gay friends to know the "eunuch" thing is probably used by the poster as a gay Muslim reference.
Some scholars have been re-evaluating old historical texts and determining that the frequent references to "eunuchs" in Arab culture back then may have been simply gays rather than mutilated people in many cases. I don't consider myself enough of an historian or language expert to offer an imformed opinion on the topic myself, but I've seen the thesis presented. Google "Queer Jihad".
Then again, the poster may actually be ball-less and insane.
-- I could tell right away that she was impressed with my HUGE Slashdot Karma.
A two or three hours a day, "plausably live".
We're lucky, here in Canada the CBC (our national semi-public broadcaster, who must of spend their entire year's budget on it) is airing the Olympics, and their coverage has always been very good for a regular broadcast station -- the Olympics are run virtually all day. (And through a good bit of the evening, too.)
The olympics will, in fact, be this year, but unfortunately NBC, in their infinite [lack of] wisdom, has decided to not only show much of the games tape-delayed, but to show *ALL* HD coverage *AT LEAST* 24 hours delayed (so as not to detract from their pre-packaged schmaltzy prime-time programming).
Blah. NBC Sports died long ago... noone told NBC, unfortunately.
No, really! I'm one of the *good* lawyers!
What we want to know is the computers they're using are running Linux and what is done to protect the network against h@xx0rs.
Privacy is terrorism.
I've got my TiVo configured with an external RAID and terabytes of storage, I'm ready -- bring it on!
Matt Slot / Bitwise Operator / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
How come the Olympics isn't available on pay-per-view? NBC could broadcast the same crappy coverage as always, but make full coverage available on PPV.
That way if you could pick and choose the sports you want to watch with full coverage.
This account has been seized by the GNAA. That is all.
NBC - 99.99% Reliabe Connection for Athens Olympics
Gee, I'm glad spellchecking is 100% reliabe.
> You certainly cant tell a marathon runner that
> you need to run it over [because of a network
> issue].
Nor could you tape it locally as you were capturing it, and retransmit it from the tape. No. That would be impossible. Or at the very least, it wouldnt cost nearly as much as having a 6-way redundant transmission link. And the goal is to spend as much of money as possible, right?
I would pay money for NBC to stay at home and let some other network, like the BBC, cover the games. They have completely screwed up the coverage of the games for decades. The worst part is that they have bought the exclusive broadcast rights, so it's watch their drek or watch nothing.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
"An Olympic event is a one-time event, and there are no do-overs," Bob Kiraly, director of broadcast and telecommunications operations at NBC, said in an interview from Athens this week. "Everything we plan for in our networks or our Athens operations center is really based on a failure scenario. You certainly can't tell a marathon runner that you need to run it over [because of a network issue]. "
Aww... What is this world coming to? I remember, back in the day, we never complained about having to do the events over for little things like Roman invasions and volcanic eruptions.
Given NBC's track record, that's almost 3 WHOLE HOURS of real, actual Olympic events amidst the 1207 hours of "what they fed their kids for breakfast while they were struggling to prepare for the Olympics" mini-series.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The 1000+ hours figure factors in the fact that NBC's HD-capable affiliates will be showing "Olympics in HD" 24/7 on their digital stations.
However, if you can see the HD feed, you will always have at least two choices (NBC HD and at least one SD feed) on the air at all times throught the games.
The major networks only will be airing "Highlights" of the upcoming political conventions in the US. Guess whether a 15 year old gymnast falls off the balance beam is more important. American students suck at science, but they can sure bounce a ball and throw it through a hoop. Long live the cult of Sport.
Covering an event for pay per view costs money. Last time they tried that, with the "olympic triplecast" they lost money.
Boxing is corrupt, we still watch that. Professional wrestling is scripted, we still watch that. Baseball players are taking enough steroids to kill a t-rex, we still watch.
We don't care so much about authenticity, we just want to be entertained.
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
I remember watching some of the network coverage of Sydney in 2000, and being amazed at how bad it was. Idiotic scripted voice-overs of tape-delayed events, and stupid background pieces on the athletes (no offense intended to the athletes themselves).
Thank goodness I live in Canada...
Mozilla
However no amount of redundancy will prevent human error. ;)
Making the entire staff redundant (the other type of redundant
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
"In the spirit of NBC's 'get the news out through redundancy' campaign, Slashdot will dupe every article they post about the Olympics!"
In the spirit of NBC's 'get the news out through redundancy' campaign, Slashdot will dupe every article they post about the Olympics!
(I'm gonna earn that redundant mod, dammit!)
"Derp de derp."
I am confused about this "1210 hours of programming". Since the advertising carpet bombing factor currently is 0.33, does that mean we get 1210 hours of Olympics and 605 hours of commercials (50 days of Olympics with 25 days of commercials), or 806 hours of Olympics and 403 hours of commercials (33 days of Olympics and 16 days of commercials) ?
Help, I really need to know !
"Would you hurry up and kill yourself?"
Still persisting, eh? Guess being proven wrong is really damaging to some people.
"Derp de derp."
I'm german, but not a Nazi. And maybe that explains why my english isn't up to paar. At least I don't go around assuming everyone speaks englsih as their first lanquage, and call them Nazis. I think that's rude.
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
Look on the brighter side. They could have brought back the PAID olympic channels red white and blue. At that point, you'd be watching people's training, interviews and everything else on top of the competition for 50hrs x 3 channels. And if you don't watch, it's kind of a waste of money.
It's amazing what you miss with the way the networks cut the olympics, and what you can see if you are there, or have an uninterrupted feed.
/cut from commercial to ice /cut back to commercials
I worked in the NOC for the last winter games and we saw EVERYTHING - and got an appreciation for some events that on TV get totally shortchanged.
The winter event that turned out to be the most fascinating? Get this - Curling! Yeah, the one where older people throw big rocks across the ice, like winter shuffleboard. What you don't see is all the fascinating strategy that goes into each shot - the way the teams get together and spend five or ten minutes studing the angles and figuring out the best way to make each shot - while the other team watches and tries to figure out what they are thinking. It's like go, with dexterity and accuracy added into the mix.
Of course, on the network, what you see is:
Show person picking up rock and looking down the ice
Show shot
Replay last moments of shot in slow-mo
Commentators make wildly inaccurate observations (our favorite part, we all got a big laugh out of some of the truly stupid stuff they said)
Now, the foreign networks, they get the raw feed and can do what they want with it. At least, at the last winter games. So they CAN show the full event, uncut, if they want. Doing that, with scrolling ads at the bottom, could be a winner for NBC - IF they had the guts.
They didn't - the article says that AT&T set them up, not that they were running them. IE, ATT did the design work. They are probably running on one provider, though - it's a prestige thing. All of the rings at Salt Lake were Qwest's - built for the games.
The infoworld article was interesting, though. 56 venues! Geez - SLC didn't have over fifteen, and I think the actual total was thirteen. That's scary to think about. Only using two rings means they are big and complex to serve that many sites - not great. SLC had seven primary rings for the thirteen sites, with one BIG OC-192 backup for everything.
And if the NOC is still dark, with four weeks to go, then they are WAY behind and WAYYY screwed. The Salt Lake NOC was up and running two months before the games started. Please, no commentary about the games running on Windows NT - Anything over layer 2 (Transport) was someone else's problem, not ours.
Good luck to them - I'm afraid they are going to need it.
I won't watch a minute unless they cover the shooting events.
To watch US coverage of the olympics you'd think there WEREN'T any such events - even though the US does exceptionally well in them.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
All the stories on EPO and Human growth hormone will get to us no matter what... I was kinda hopeing for a break from it.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
An Olympic event is a one-time event, and there are no do-overs
Yeah, but there are video recorders and delays? Most of the crap^H^H^H^H sport is going to have to be time shifted anyway. What i would do for all that bandwidth and equipment! (deathmatch on the big screen)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
No, no, it's 30 minutes guaranteed delivery time, like all the Greek-owned delivery places.
Mmmm, somehow joking about Greece and soccer is not a good idea those days... :)
Repeat after me: We are all individuals