Good Morning China - Olympic Games Begin - NBC Provisions the Hell Out Of Their Network

John Earnhardht, Cisco’s Chief Blogger, writes on his blog over at Cisco about NBC and the Olypmpics. (note: I met with John yesterday for coffee Cisco has a increased amount of internal bloggers coming on board).

John’s Title of his post is: NBC Achieves “Holy Grail of Digital Video” for Beijing Olympics - Translation: NBC has provisioned the hell out of their network.

NBC is going all out to broadcast the games. I would like to find out exactly how they are setting up their networks and how they are handling it. It’s one thing to know in advance the magnitude of the audience but what about other events that have flash crowds. Also how much are the CDNs gaining? What about P2P? Too many questions and too many secrets on how it’s being architected (NBC network)

Here is John’s post.

Cisco IP Video technology will enable groundbreaking NBC coverage of Beijing Olympic Games. NBC will provide Olympic experience anywhere, anyplace, anytime to multiple delivery platforms.

Craig Lau, vice president for Information Technology, NBC Olympics states, “With the Cisco network solution, we’ve achieved the Holy Grail of digital video, which is the ability to perform shot selections on low-resolution files and extract high-resolution material from those files even as they are being recorded. That is a huge accomplishment.” He continues: “Cisco is a trusted partner, and in the demanding IT environment of the Olympic Games, we depend on trusted relationships. We have absolute deadlines for when Olympics coverage begins and ends. Cisco technologies help us exceed expectations and meet our timetables in an unforgiving environment.”

Tony Bates, senior vice president and general manager, Cisco Service Provider Group says, ”We are making broadcast history, executing the creation, management and distribution of digital video in a way that’s never been achieved before….The next best thing to being in Beijing is to be able to see the event coverage.”

I, for one, am looking forward to following some events online and via broadcast, but it is cool that NBC is enabling people to access the content via multiple platforms…and it is cool that Cisco is able to help NBC accomplish this. Here’s where you need to go to follow coverage of the Olympics on NBC.