The Wall Street Journal has an article out about “Why the Olympics Scare Tech Pros.” But really, should this even be scary anymore?
We’ve known for quite some time that major cultural events, such as the Olympics, can increase recreational traffic on the network as people tune in to catch sporting events. These events can generate enough traffic to push many enterprise networks to the limits and adversely affect business-critical application performance. And NBC plans to stream footage of the Beijing games over the Internet.
There are a number of solutions including QoS policies, limiting bandwidth to certain subnets… I particularly like the approach that Brunswick (the bowling guys) are taking.
[Cathy] McClain [divisional chief information officer at Brunswick] can’t just block streaming videos. Some Brunswick employees, the marketing department for example, have to watch the Olympics for work reasons. And blocking sites doesn’t fit with the company culture. Instead, she’s letting workers do whatever they want. But if the network becomes strained, a message will pop up on employees’ computers asking whether they’re watching the video for work-related reasons, and if not, could they please wait until off-peak hours.
The messages explain that Brunswick is trying to save money and McClain includes her phone number so that anyone who has a question can call for an explanation. And they don’t block the video – they just ask workers if they have to watch right now.
It’s a backlash-free way to protect the network. “My community is polite,” McClain tells us. “They get it.”
So, yes, there needs to be policies in place for this sort of thing. But it’s not like this is any sort of big surprise. We’ve had four years to prepare for this. Four. Years. And chances are if you’re reading this you know about what streaming video can do to your network if left unchecked, you’ve probably lived through a few March Madnesses and Super Bowls and World Cup and World Series and Shriner Bowls…
Besides, the Olympics are crap.
What? They are!
First, and to the chagrin of those guys at Brunswick, there are no bowling events. They just completely ignore the sport. How can you even take the Olympics seriously if they don’t include bowling? We’re talking about a franchise whose winter version has included curling. Curling is practically the same thing, only colder and with brooms.
Secondly, the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) is changing the rules of baseball at the last minute. You can’t do that! You can’t really even call it baseball if you change the rules. Call it… I don’t know. Whinyball.
And of course there’s the whole China/human rights thing.
Worst of all, the Olympic games in Beijing is pretty much dominated by sports. Seriously, someone should talk to their marketing department. I feel pretty confident based on informal polling of myself and my friends at the Linux User Group, the guys at the comic book store, and my LARP buddies – and they pretty much agree that the Olympics has to have some sort of draw other than sports, because really, who likes watching that stuff?
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