Submitted by Heidi Gabrielson, NetScout Solutions Marketing Manager
Today, NBC announced that it will be providing an unprecedented 3,600 hours of Olympic coverage over seven NBC Universal networks, as well as on NBCOlympics.com. NBCOlympics.com will feature approximately 2,200 total hours of live streaming broadband video coverage across 25 sports over the 17 days of the Beijing Games (Aug. 8-24). Are you and your network prepared for this potential onslaught?
Streaming audio and video can be an enormous bandwidth hog. It uses a lot more of the network than any other application. At a remote office location, even one person watching live video coverage of the Olympics can slow down the entire network. And it doesn’t take more than a handful of viewers at large sites to slow the network to a point where customers have difficulty accessing your Web site or the quality of your VoIP calls degrades.
Often employees don’t realize they are abusing the network and don’t understand how watching something as exciting as the Synchronized Swimming finals impacts the rest of the business. We suggest you take a moment over the next few weeks to remind your employees of your Internet usage policy and to temporarily add http://www.nbcolympics.com/ to the list of URLs that you monitor with your nGenius Solution.
For more information, check out our technology note “Distinguishing Business Use of the Network from Recreational Use”.
In related news, review the article posted on eWeek.com by Paula Musich titled "How to Not Bring the Network to Its Knees During March Madness" that talks about alternatives to resolving these type of issues such as placing a TV in the cafeteria or lounge to boost employee moral while at the same time preserving costly bandwidth.
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