'Playing' with Network Technologies

Besides the flamboyant opening ceremony, Abhinav Bindra's air rifle shooting

excellence, wrestler Sushil Kumar and boxer Vijender Kumar having won a bronze

for India, the Beijing Olympics gave us one more reason to cheer-the

state-of-the-art network technology that was deployed for the event-thanks to

the efforts of the 'Principal Technology Partner', H3C Technologies, which is

part of the global voice and data networking biggies, 3Com Corporation.

Superior use of technology was experienced at the much-hyped Bird's Nest and

Water Cube stadium, where real-time streaming Internet and high-quality

video-based surveillance ensured safety of a massive audience and players.

Physical structures to ensure safety were erected too; everything from network

switches to high-end IP Surveillance systems were in place.

Ensuring smooth visitor experience



Owing to a sudden spurt in the no. of travelers descending into Beijing, a new
airport terminal was added where H3C's solutions were used to power a new 10G

Ethernet backbone to support the aerodrome's routine operations, besides

real-time production and flight mgmt services, including ground emergency

commands, terminal broadcast services, and dynamic flight information displays.

This deployment was a direct result of the Chinese govt's decision to prioritize

superior guest experience from the time an Olympic fan set foot into Beijing.

The next step of course was to ensure increase in comfort levels of guests

while they were on the move within the city. Beijing Public Transportation Group

(BPT Group) worked with H3C to build an IP monitoring system to monitor bus

stations and parking lots, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines, and special Olympic

bus lines. Around 10,000 'monitoring points' were operational, and the network

architecture allowed real-time security monitoring for the entire transportation

system, as well as several value-added services including vehicle dispatching,

arrival, and departure monitoring, VoIP access, office automation, IC card auto

ticket examination, electronic route information, etc. In addition, wireless

cameras were installed on buses running some of the Olympics bus lines to ensure

they meet special requirements of players and VIP guests. This was done using

the Ethernet Passive Optical Networks (EPON) optical transmission technology

which allowed multiple terminals to share the same line of optical fiber,

greatly reducing operational and engineering costs.

User participation



The ultimate aim of technology to enrich human life was also fulfilled for
Olympic fans. Uninterrupted access to real-time news and video clips via SOHU's

video-on-demand 'Watch-and-Listen' blogsite gave fans an opportunity to view

up-to-the-minute news, results, and footage via the Internet. Built on the SAN

storage architecture, the H3C network storage solution which formed the backbone

of the VoD site, enabled fast access to mass data (video in 3 sec at peak

performance) and centralized management of storage devices for the blogs; worked

in conjunction with a unified Web interface that automatically raises an alarm

once the system goes faulty, allowing network admins to manage devices using

CallHome feature, which significantly shortens the downtime and secure

high-speed video download.

Abhinav Bindra for giving India its first individual Olympic gold medal, and ninth overall, on winning 10 meters air rifle event at the Beijing 2008 Olympics	Wrestler Sushil Kumar for the bronze medal in 66-kg freestyle competition in Beijing Olympics	Vijender Kumar for Bronze Medal in boxing, giving India its first boxing medal in Olympics

Feeling the ripple in the US



Even the US felt the power of technology deployments at the Beijing Olympics.
NBC, America's Official Olympic Network' owned the exclusive US media rights to

the Olympic Games, and to ensure superior viewer experience, Avaya was selected

to provide a unified communications solution to NBC Universal in support of the

network's coverage of the games. The channel, NBC Olympics operates under a

unique set of IT circumstances: every 2 years the organization needs a complete

business communications network set up in a new location-that will be in use for

little more than a month. In other words, there is a sudden spurt in the

requirement of computing power, but the lifecycle of deployment is a matter of a

month or two, and in the case of the Beijing games, reliable communication

networks were vital for NBC.

Avaya Gigabit Ethernet phones landing were used on more than 500 desks

accompanied by another 200 value sets elsewhere in the network. The PoE phones

provided NBC Olympics with the highest quality audio and the lowest power

consumption of any similar business class telephones on the market today. The

company is enabling greater mobility by allowing calls made to an employee's

extension also ring their mobile phones , and the newer models of Avaya phones

helps the team to trigger switch active calls between the desk phone and

cellular device. These phones can also enable one employee to see the

availability of others in his or her workgroup for live calls by displaying

names and telephony presence on the back-lit screen.

Hi-def visuals



The Beijing games were also the first in the history of Olympics to have
international signal produced and transmitted in high def format, and one of the

top sponsors, Panasonic's support in the form of a plethora of electronics

equipment-25 giant screens or 'Astro Vision' installed at 18 venues, 284 RAMSA

audio systems at 41 venues (33 competition venues, and 8 non-competition

venues), and flat screen VIERA televisions. The scale was approx. 1.7 times that

of Athens 2004, and was Panasonic's largest involvement ever.