3 ms·

This sort of "wasteful spending" tends to happen for big budget events for reliability reasons. You might be able to save $10k by reusing equipment from the las

This sort of "wasteful spending" tends to happen for big budget events for reliability reasons. You might be able to save $10k by reusing equipment from the last event or using a venue's equipment, but if the equipment cuts out mid-show, it will cost a lot more than $10k in missed opportunity. I spent a week hanging out at Circuit of the Americas helping to run a solar car race, and asked about all the loose CAT6 bursting out of every wire conduit. The broadcasters run new cable for their equipment every Formula One race, hardwire it, then cut it loose and pack up. It's apparently cheaper to do that than to debug connection problems with existing cables, or risk losing a camera feed unexpectedly due to intermittent connections from failing connectors.

marcan_42 6y ago
I help out at Spain's largest LAN party every year, and run systems (not networking, but I work with those folks). One year we tried laying the fiber for the satellite switches in the troughs and leaving it there for next year. We laid extras for redundancy. Come next year, something like 30% of the fibers were dead and we even had places where both paths were dead and we had to patch up above ground. Nope. Venues and especially the people who rent them can't be trusted with cabling. We now run our own every year, in an efficient combination of above ground and through the wiring troughs. We pull it out when we're done though. Only a couple things -the main internet feed, which is more robust, and the line that crosses halls- stay there to be reused (or fixed if necessary, groan).
nharada 6y ago
I remember when I was doing live sound that my mentor would switch out EVERY battery in the microphones EACH show for fresh ones. Those batteries were probably still 75% charged after 2-3 hours, but the risk of accidentally having a battery you lost track of dying during a show was just too high -- easier to replace them all. Ultimately not that expensive in the scheme of things.

marcan_42 6y ago

I help out at Spain's largest LAN party every year, and run systems (not networking, but I work with those folks). One year we tried laying the fiber for the satellite switches in the troughs and leaving it there for next year. We laid extras for redundancy. Come next year, something like 30% of the fibers were dead and we even had places where both paths were dead and we had to patch up above ground. Nope. Venues and especially the people who rent them can't be trusted with cabling. We now run our own every year, in an efficient combination of above ground and through the wiring troughs. We pull it out when we're done though. Only a couple things -the main internet feed, which is more robust, and the line that crosses halls- stay there to be reused (or fixed if necessary, groan).

nharada 6y ago

I remember when I was doing live sound that my mentor would switch out EVERY battery in the microphones EACH show for fresh ones. Those batteries were probably still 75% charged after 2-3 hours, but the risk of accidentally having a battery you lost track of dying during a show was just too high -- easier to replace them all. Ultimately not that expensive in the scheme of things.