Part 1 of our audit article certainly pushed some buttons. I received quite few emails regarding previous and current management that insist upon overtaxing existing infrastructure, and/or are completely oblivious to the fact that there is a limit to how much electricity you can use, even though there are plenty of outlets left…On the positive side, I received a reminder regarding vehicles. Many of the larger production truck/trailers have meters on them for power, but it is easy to forget about HVAC loads. On the subject of loads, when adding equipment to vehicles, make sure you consider weight and balance, as both can affect handling and licensing.

Certainly, power and HVAC are big items that need to be monitored for capacity and growth.The explosion of networked equipment brings with it many other areas that really should be monitored but rarely are. These include IP addresses, network bandwidth, usernames and passwords as well as software licensing. Each of these items could be an article in itself, but for now we will touch on the highlights as facility size can greatly influence how they could be handled. Within a small group or facility, these items might all be handled by one person on an as needed basis. Larger facilities might have one or two dedicated staff members assigned to the task, or even outsource it to a local IT shop. Most of the larger groups and networks will have a complete departments focused on tracking all these items and more. In short, the larger the network, the more people will be needed to keep it healthy.

IP addressing is a simple concept that can easily turn into a nightmare if not tracked. For instance, let’s say you take the easy route, set up for DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol) and allocate a class C address range (256 addresses—254 usable) to the facility. Six to twelve months later, you plug in the 255th device and cannot get an address. In the heat of the moment, the last thing on your mind is going to be that DHCP allocation pool running out.

Setting static IP addresses and keeping track of them on a spreadsheet might be an entirely easier endeavor, if for no other reason than you have to look at it once in a while to get new addresses. DHCP works very well in an office setting where laptops come and go and do not need a set address. For stationary equipment, I have always had much better luck with a static addressing scheme and keeping track of the addresses in a spreadsheet, database or web application.

If you have no idea how your addresses are setup or used, there are numerous network scanners that can provide considerable details as to your network layout. Make sure before you use them that you have the necessary rights and permissions so that the scan is not viewed as a hostile threat. One facility I know of ran a scan on what they thought was an isolated network of about 200 machines and found that someone had infiltrated that network and there were more than 1500 addresses that could access the network—a major security risk!

Network bandwidth, much like all those extra outlets is something that can easily be higher than expected if not monitored. Many switches provide GUIs and SNMP alarms that include bandwidth utilization. Like power and cooling these systems need to be checked regularly and tracked to ensure they are not overcapacity and are in line with expected growth patterns. Trigger points for additional capacity can easily be established well in advance. This will provide additional data when submitting budget requests. Tracking data, combined with previously agreed to limits can make it much easier for management to approve the necessary funds.

Users and passwords are tricky. Obviously, there should be no unauthorized users on your network, but how many pieces of equipment have the default user and password as the primary way in? If the device is on the network and there is access from the outside, it can be a real security problem. How many people have the administrator or root password to the network servers? Do you trust them all? Can you track them? Administrator passwords need to be well guarded, but not too well…if only one person knows it, and they get hit by a bus; then what? A hierarchy of leadership and technical personnel needs to manage the ‘keys’ to the system. Passwords need to be kept secure, but major network passwords should not be trusted to only a single individual. Every business is different, but technical personnel with passwords need to ensure that necessary passwords are accessible by others in the event of an emergency.

As you can see, there are plenty of things within the facility that need to be monitored. If your facility is like most, you are too busy to track these items. Unfortunately, the less they are monitored, the more likely a crisis is. If nothing else, simply mentioning the fact that your current capacity is unknown might get you some help in finding the answers. Good luck!

One of my early broadcast projects involved building a remote edit suite for a pair of Ampex VPR-80s. The suite was located in a corner of the studio about 50 feet from the machines themselves. Due to the cable route, the cables were close to 75 feet long. At the time, the only control other than the front panel was a parallel cable. As I recall, each connector was about 60 pins. These were solder pins that were placed in a large connector block (~2.5” x 1”). A pin inserter/extractor tool allowed the pins to be soldered outside the block then inserted. Inevitably, with that many pins, one or two were inserted into the wrong positions and the extractor tool made it relatively simple to correct. Relatively large gauge cable had to be used for several of the connections as the edit controller was powered by the machines. When it was all said and done, the remote cables weighed in at about 100lbs. Within a year, serial control became available. What a difference! Today, an Ethernet cable or even wireless is all that is needed to control a variety of equipment.

Technology has come a long way, and I am finding myself seeking features I would have never considered. For instance, the thought of a radio card inside a PC never made much sense when an inexpensive radio cost $50, but the PC was $1000 and the radio card another $25-$50. Recently though, I needed an audio amplifier with a web server. Why? I am building a control room for an IPTV headend and one unusually troublesome item is the number of remote controls on the desk. There are often two operators or more, and remotes are constantly being shuffled around. The new control room has provisions for audio at each operator desk as well as separate audio for the room. What I needed was a way to control the room audio without placing the amplifier in front of one operator and without a physical remote control. Several consumer manufacturers are offering iPad control, but in this application, an iPad is just another device to clutter the desk. Sure enough, Denon (and others) offer web-based remote control of their receivers. Problem solved.

It is interesting that the solution is essentially a PC inside of a radio, rather than the other way around. The question, and real point here is: how are you using technology? Are you applying old patterns such as parallel remote control to new technology? Or, are you thinking outside the box and seeking out new ways of doing things? Once new technologies are embraced, it often becomes harder to solve a problem using older methods; imagine trying to remote control a file server using a parallel cable.