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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.
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
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?"
Resale
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!
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.
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...
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 actually not true. It seems like NBC is planning on prempting ALL of their coverage on all of their networks (I wonder what they're going to do with CNBC during business hours... olympics + stock ticker?)
They'll be broadcasting it ALL across all 7 of their channels (bravo, cnbc, msnbc, telemundo, nbc, USA, nbcHD [local HD affiliates]. The HD broadcasts will be in 5.1 1080i too, which is pretty damn slick.
Of course, aside from a prestige thing, this looks like network programming suicide.
I think that's the point... NBC is planning to show people that they can do good coverage, because ALOT of people complained ALOT about Sydney.
1200+ hours of live coverage across 7 channels all day is about as good as you can get.
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.
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.
I wonder how much of that coverage will be about non-american athletes...
Maybe it's just me, but I like seeing competitors from other countries and seeing profiles on them as well...
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle