COMPANY
National Theatre
INDUSTRY
Media & Entertainment
COMPANY SIZE
Midsized Company
COUNTRY
England
SCALE
3 theatres, 1,000+ employees, 24 performances per week
The National Theatre in London is one of the world's most celebrated performing arts venues, staging around 24 performances per week across three theatres with a team of more than 1,000 people. When the lights fail mid-performance, thousands of audience members are directly affected.
The lighting control network is the technical backbone of every show: control desks, managed switches, and connected devices across all three theatres. Daniel Murfin, Lighting Control Manager, needed to be alerted immediately when anything went wrong. Without monitoring, troubleshooting was manual and time-consuming.
The team needed a solution non-technical lighting staff could also use, with geographic maps making fault location immediate.
PRTG was chosen for its ease of use, advanced features, and flexible licensing that can grow with the network. Even non-technical staff use it as a troubleshooting tool, accessing geographic maps that show which devices are online to identify the location of a fault instantly.
One incident demonstrated its value. A software update to the lighting desks caused a spike in network traffic, pushing some control devices past their 10Mbps limit and degrading performance. PRTG pinpointed the exact day the problem started, giving the software manufacturer the information needed to identify the faulty version.
Devices can be grouped so notifications reach only relevant people. Less time is now spent on reactive troubleshooting: 40% of the time Murfin previously spent on network issues has been freed up for training lighting programmers, special projects, and supporting lighting designers.
PRTG means that I can be confident the network is up and running smoothly, so that we can concentrate on making world class theatre.
