World Cup will break our internet

[Tango]

All data from the stadiums is being transmitted via Telkom to the main FIFA offices at Nasrec (I think it is). They apparently have a number of routes via which they can do this. From their it is packaged and sent around the world via the same channels and will leave South Africa from the usual landing stations.

Sentech are on board to provide satellite transmission as a back up. They need to guarantee 100% up time for broadcast purposes. It will only be switched over to satellite if terrestrial goes down. Their service level agreements with FIFA are hardcore!

The media centre has a "farm" of satellite dishes covering an area of 5,000m2. The entire centre covers 75,000m2. Add to this the strengthening of the capacity of the Eutelsat satellites for broadcasting purposes.

Obviously everything is being done to ensure there is absolutely no downtime from a broadcast perspective. How this affects the man on the street remains to be seen. This is not a piss willy undertaking we are dealing with here!

Just as a matter of interest, during the Confed Cup, Sentech was supposed to be the standby link for Telkom (Fibre was primary feed.) About 35 minutes into the first game, there was problems with the fibre feed. Sentech took over with the primary feed on Satellite. This was confirmed by staff from Eurovision who did the world feed uplinking to the rest of the world and Geneva

 

[ponder]

omg how will it break our internet????? think about it, how many games are going to be played at the same time? It will be streamed out but I doubt the streaming a couple of live games out will break our internet (maybe seacom). think of youtube they have been broken yet and they all about video streaming to 1000's of peeps. their line hasnt caught fire yet.

I highly doubt TCP/IP will be used to stream any of the broadcast, it's most likely dedicated systems or ATM.

 

[bwidth]

The Internet generally only breaks when I unplug my router at home. I will try to leave it on during the worldcup but if Eskom decides to do loadshedding in my area then I cant help it if it turns off, sorry.

 

[Sinbad]

Our risk department at work suggested all support staff ensure they have ADSL during the world cup, as they expect the 3G networks to buckle under the strain.

Far more realistic, I think.

 

[AcidT]

As Anthropoid and Yuu stated...

There is a newly built network in place used for the FWC broadcasting and what ever they want to use it for...

There should not be any change in ADSL speed and so on as it also works on it's own network...

The concern should be with the ISP's..can they provide enough bandwidth out of the country to serve the whole world from Africa?

 

[LancelotSA]

Just as a matter of interest, during the Confed Cup, Sentech was supposed to be the standby link for Telkom (Fibre was primary feed.) About 35 minutes into the first game, there was problems with the fibre feed. Sentech took over with the primary feed on Satellite. This was confirmed by staff from Eurovision who did the world feed uplinking to the rest of the world and Geneva

Yip, you are correct. Sentech confirmed that their "standby" systems were tested during the Confed Cup.