One of the world’s largest music festivals sets a high benchmark for AV over IP

INTRODUCTION

Ensuring guests at one of the world’s largest, most impressive pop-up music festivals have an excellent experience depends on delivering AV and digital display information reliably and at the highest quality. Only AV over IP can manage this task on such a huge scale spanning miles, in a complex environment, and in a short timeframe. Live events and entertainment specialist OSA International, Inc. played a critical role in making that happen, with some help from the NETGEAR Pro AV Design team and NETGEAR managed switches built for AV.

BACKGROUND

Once a year, the middle of a desert turns into one of the world’s biggest music festivals. The scale is immense: imagine a site six miles in diameter and with one stage so large that it takes several minutes to walk end to end. Six further stages host artists from all over the globe, watched by many thousands of guests at this three-day sell-out extravaganza.

Along with all the AV requirements created by those artists’ music and video, digital signage is essential for a massive event like this. For example, a ticker-style LED system runs around the entire perimeter so that, at any one time, guests can check who is performing next and where. There are also eight 30 x 80 foot high LED screens around the site, plus smaller digital signage around the campus, providing further information such as directions, including emergency alerts, should those become necessary to protect everyone’s safety. Furthermore, other systems, such as storage, security, and intercom systems, need network connectivity.

THE CHALLENGE

To cover the network needs of a campus on this scale, the organization handling the event’s content creation and distribution turned to US-based OSA International, Inc., which it had worked with previously and had been impressed by the team’s know-how and commitment to solving challenges.

For the desert-based music festival, OSA created a master control network for all the digital signage, as well as distribution, storage, and centralization of other content. And for the 2022 event, it became clear that 100Gb networking would be the best fit for the vast amount of traffic that would be generated.

THE ANSWER

OSA was already familiar with the NETGEAR AV line of switches designed specifically for AV installations, but the 10Gb port speeds of the M4300 series it had used previously were not going to be sufficient. “So we consulted with the Pro AV Design team at NETGEAR, and it became clear that the M4500 series of switches was the way to go,” says Michael Solomon, Vice President, OSA. Part of the Pro AV line, the M4500 series combines the reconfigurability of a matrix switch together with the scalability of Ethernet to support hundreds of IP endpoints in a highly cost-effective way.

For instance, Michael explains, “On the 4500s, the multigig capability on any port was beneficial. Being able to break out the 100Gb ports into 10Gb or 25Gb saved us from having another switch to support all the servers. On the main switch, I got 12 servers on four ports. The flexibility is awesome.”

M4500S ON SITE

Once on site, the OSA crew installed three M4500s: one as a core switch in the server room (with four of the 100Gb ports used in a 4 x 25Gb configuration), a second in the main master control trailer, and a third in another trailer, with 200Gb lags between the trio. 14 Disguise VX servers supporting digital signage were connected at 25Gb, as were several rendering machines for additional on-site content requirements.

Chris Ladner, who was OSA’s Engineer in Charge on site, adds, “Approximately 30 users in total were connected to the switches, such as content editors, producers, and technicians, all with their own connected devices with traffic distributed to each one of them as either 1Gb, 10Gb, or 25Gb. Some also had multiple multi-gig connections.” In addition, OSA also created VLANs on some ports to have internet media content and control on the same NIC.

M4300S TOO

Each of the seven stages had its own 10Gb M4300 AV switch with fiber back to the core M4500, which could then retrieve and post content to network-attached storage (NAS) supplied by OSA.

Says Chris Ladner, “We had two lines going to and from each stage for video and audio so that we could record everything and store it centrally.” Several additional M4300s supported KVM, NDI, router panels, and control network devices within the second control room, using these switches’ Power over Ethernet (PoE) capabilities to reduce additional cabling requirements.

SUPERLATIVE SUPPORT

Network equipment aside, Michael Solomon also calls out the quality of support from the NETGEAR Pro AV team. “While we were already familiar with the M4300 switches, this was the first time we’d worked with the M4500s, but we had a lot of support from the NETGEAR team, helping us with configuration and multiple online training sessions. Even when we were on site, NETGEAR continued to help us to ensure that we had a successful event. That support level is something you don’t get from other providers.”

The good news is that OSA’s hard work paid dividends, and pretty much everything went to plan, ensuring that the digital display backbone network supporting this major music festival contributed to making this a memorable event for everyone involved. Concludes Chris Ladner, “It was an exciting project to be involved in, and we look forward to supporting the next one later this year.”