Protecting the Corporate Network, Apps From the Rio Olympics

Companies typically experience network performance due to employees streaming high-profile events. With the Olympics upon us, here are ways to alleviate strains on the network this time around.

During the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, there were 8.2 billion page views and 628 million video streams. NBC officials have said that during the Rio Olympics, the network will provide more than 4,500 hours of coverage streamed via NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app.

Sixty-nine percent of respondents to the Riverbed survey said they have had at least one network issue in the past caused by employees accessing Olympic content online.

Eighty-five percent of respondents said they are like to more closely monitor the performance of their applications and networks—including WiFi—during the Olympics to determine if employee viewing of online content will slow things down. Forty-two percent of these companies said they are very likely to monitor more closely.

Of the respondents, only 2 percent said they were unlikely to monitor their networks and applications any differently during the Rio Olympics.

Seventy percent of businesses will limit the access employees will have to Olympic content through their corporate networks.

While 43 percent of respondents are confident they can safeguard critical apps during times of high network use, 12 percent are not confident.

Forty-eight percent of enterprises expect employees to use their desktops or laptops for viewing content over corporate networks, followed by smartphones at 34 percent and tablets and other non-smartphone devices at 18 percent.

Brazil, at 44 percent, was the only country in the survey in which businesses believed—by a slight margin—that more employees would use smartphones than PCs or tablets.

Real-time, end-to-end monitoring technologies can give businesses visibility into what is going on with their networks and applications.

Businesses can prioritize and optimize company network traffic and reserve bandwidth for business-critical applications.

Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) doesn’t mean giving employees unfettered access to the corporate network on any device they want. Businesses can distinguish between company assets and employee-owned devices, and limit network access accordingly.

Businesses can bring together the various siloed IT teams to help develop plans for any high-priority network events during the next couple of weeks.

Employers may want to put TVs in common areas to give workers a place to watch Olympic events without putting a burden on the network.