As the Official Supplier of Network Equipment to Sochi 2014, Avaya is providing a full communications experience to more than 40,000 Olympic Family members while interconnecting 11 competition venues, three Olympic Villages, Media Centers, Celebration Centers, Data Centers and Technology Operating Centers.

This is expected to be the largest Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Olympics, and the Avaya network will support an anticipated 120,000 mobile devices at any given time.  Fueling the demand for wireless connectivity is the fact that for the first time in Olympic Games history, all accredited media will have free access to high speed WiFi services. The Avaya network will provide fast and secure connectivity for mobile devices based on the user’s log-in credentials.

This is also the first Winter Games to leverage network virtualization – helping the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee to raise the bar in terms of simplicity, reliability and speed. The Avaya Fabric Connect technology has enabled the design and deployment of the Sochi Olympic network within a short timeframe and will also help deliver faster resolution to any issues that might occur. The agility of this technology makes it a formidable tool to manage to the ever-changing, dynamic Olympic Games environment – enabling any last minute move or change request to be completed quickly and without risk. The Avaya solution can also easily accommodate sudden spikes in network capacity – which is common for high profile competition events.

Sochi will also deploy Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) technology to distribute 36 HD video channels to each Olympic venue. Due to the unique ability of the Avaya Fabric Connect technology to distribute video with increased reliability and scale over traditional networking technologies, the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee was able to save money and simplify operations by being able to leverage a common network for voice, data and IPTV services.

A Glance at the Numbers:

18 months to deploy the network from beginning to end

21 shift-based operational staff and 19 expert support  staff will oversee operation of the network, 24/7

Sochi volunteers and officials will utilize 6,500 IP phones

2,500 Wireless access points will be dispersed throughout the venues

Multicast capabilities on the Fabric Connect network will support 36 simultaneous HD IPTV channels

1-2 terabytes of data will be used per day

Traditional networking technologies generally take a few seconds for recovery; but for example the Avaya Fabric Connect backbone can recover within 20 milliseconds of an outage or issue

“From end-to-end, Sochi requires a sophisticated and efficient network to deliver accuracy at the Games – whether a scorekeeper is booking accurate time, an athlete beats a record by a 10th of a second or a reporter must upload a critical video file. Every time the Olympic Family sends a video stream or an image, a tweet or a Facebook post, they will need a robust, fast, modern and highly resilient network infrastructure. That’s what we provide to Sochi. Avaya’s technology powers simple, resilient, agile communications for small businesses up to the largest enterprises, making us the ideal network partner for the Sochi Olympic Winter Games, “ says, Pierre-Paul Allard, senior vice president, worldwide sales and president, global field operations

“As an application service provider, it is obviously critical to Stargate that its online services are available at all times,” said Greig Guy, Brocade country manager for Australia and New Zealand. “Our partner, Mycom, designed a very elegant solution that simplifies the Stargate routing infrastructure while increasing network resiliency to make it virtually failsafe. We are also now engaging with Stargate on how to move ahead with SDN, which will bring major data center operational benefits.”

The Brocade NetIron CER 2000 Series enables SDN by supporting the OpenFlow protocol, which allows direct access to and manipulation of the forwarding plane from an SDN controller. As a next stage, Stargate is currently evaluating the Brocade Virtual ADX® Application Delivery Platform, which enables an on-demand service delivery model and extends application delivery service as an “elastic” network component.