NBC's network a virtual reality >BY Denise Pappalardo, East Coast Bureau Chief

Those of us not in Atlanta to watch the Olympic Games will be gathered around our television sets to view our favorite events, in care of NBC. AT&T and OnStream Networks worked with the New York-based broadcasting company to extend its production facilities to the Games. NBC, an AT&T customer, decided it wanted to connect its home site in New York to its virtual facilities in Atlanta. For previous Games coverage, NBC recreated its broadcast center production facilities overseas in Barcelona and Seoul. But economics determined the better choice this year was for NBC to connect its headquarters to the Games in Atlanta instead of building a new production center. AT&T established what it called a "900-mile extension cord," with OnStream's BMXstream BMX45 broadband bandwidth managers at each end. Multiple dedicated T-1 and T-3 connections were provisioned, in addition to two OC-48 Sonet rings in Atlanta and another in New York, to transport program video, graphics files and intercom and control signals. Security and redundancy were primary concerns for AT&T in designing the equipment package for NBC. "The network is fully redundant for security reasons," said John Fordham, national account manger for AT&T at the Santa Clara, Calif.-based OnStream Networks. "Security issues were one of the main reasons OnStream was chosen." For the past six weeks, AT&T and OnStream have been going through "one horrendous chain of what-ifs" to prepare for any security issue imaginable, Fordham said. The network can also be managed using remote control technology from sites in New York and California, in case the NBC site in Atlanta had to evacuate. Technicians off-site can remotely shut down the network to avoid break-ins.