COMPANY
Riedel Communications
INDUSTRY
IT & Telecommunication and Media & Entertainment
COMPANY SIZE
Midsized Company
COUNTRY
Germany
SCALE
Small IT team, one of the largest MediorNet networks ever deployed by Riedel
The Eurovision Song Contest draws over 100 million TV viewers. Every camera feed, audio signal, and data connection has to work. For hours. Without interruption.
Riedel Communications was responsible for all audio, video, radio, and data for the live production and global television transmission. The network spanned cameras, steadicams, camera cranes, a spidercam, 1,500 journalist workstations, 80 networked printers, 120 VoIP phones, and 38 wireless access points. The infrastructure contained 5,500 IP addresses requiring continuous monitoring.
Everything had to be set up, tested, and running before the show went live and stay running throughout.
PRTG monitored all IT functions across the arena network via SNMP: switches, MediorNet and RockNet devices, firewalls, wireless access points, and the 80 networked printers, including paper levels and ink quantities. During setup, the team used PRTG for tests and error analysis to catch issues before the broadcast began.
PRTG Maps gave operators at each location a clear visual overview, displayed on flat screens across the press center and production areas.
PRTG ran as a failover cluster with up to five server installations. If one node failed, a backup took over automatically. Alerts fired when thresholds were approaching, giving the team time to act before problems reached the broadcast.
The PRTG Maps feature was particular vital for this event, as it provided us with incomparable overviews of the space and equipment. We made the maps available to the operators of the various locations in the arena. The flat screens, PRTG maps, and press center made quite an impression among the technicians, and highlighted the importance of centralized monitoring to the production of a televised event.
