Cisco Scores in Demo of Wireless LAN Technology during NBA All-Star Game Weekend
Atlanta police use Wi-Fi network to access live video feeds for better security, crowd control
February 14, 2003
By Charles Waltner, News@Cisco
While Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and other NBA basketball players were flying through the air during the NBA All-Star Game this past weekend in Atlanta, bits and bytes were airborne as well, all in an effort to improve security and policing during the high-profile event.
The City of Atlanta Police Department used Cisco System's wireless local area networking (LAN) technology to provide live video feeds from its helicopter to its three command centers located within the city.
With the aid of the video link, representatives of the public service agencies responsible for security--including city, county, and state police forces--could jointly observe crowd, traffic and other activities and make prompt decisions.
"We were, for example, able to see areas as they became congested, and we were able to send personnel to those areas before they got out of hand," said Lieutenant C.J. Davis, public affairs manager for the City of Atlanta Police. "The wireless network made our jobs a lot easier and worked just as we had hoped."
The wireless network consisted of a video feed sent via microwave from the helicopter to Atlanta's City Hall East building. There it was relayed directly to personnel in that command center. At the same time the analog video signal from the microwave was into an Internet Protocol (IP) signal, using the Situational Awareness System from eWatch, a company that provides situational awareness and multimedia surveillance systems. From the City Hall rooftop, the signal was then broadcast--using an antenna connected to a Cisco Aironet 350 Wireless Bridge--to the Fulton County building command center and a mobile van command center in the city's downtown. Each command center had its own antenna and Aironet 350 Wireless Bridge to receive the signal. Cisco's Aironet 350 Wireless Bridge uses popular 802.11b technology, which provided more than enough bandwidth to send the video feeds with no quality degradation over transmission distances greater than one-and-a-half miles.
Darrell Saulsberry, an account manager for Cisco, said the Atlanta police thought the NBA All-Star Game weekend would be a perfect opportunity to test the Aironet Wi-Fi technology under critical real-life conditions. According to all reports, the network was a top-scorer. Set up in little over a week, the Wi-Fi system ran without interruption or technical difficulties from Friday through Sunday.
Besides serving as a test of the technology, the Atlanta Police had several practical reasons to turn to Cisco and its 802.11 networking products. Most importantly, the wireless network provided the only viable way the police could set up a network for delivering the video feeds. The wired networks for the Atlanta Police and Fulton County were separate and could not be linked together for the NBA event. And though the police could have run the video over a secured Internet connection, they would not have been able to control the bandwidth and quality of the video. Finally, the mobile command center van could not be connected to a wired network. In all cases, Cisco's Aironet wireless LAN technology proved the perfect option.
The NBA All-Star Game weekend provided Cisco the perfect opportunity to demonstrate just how good wireless networks can be. This test joins the other successful deployments of Cisco wireless LAN networks for public service organizations, such as the ones for the Seal Beach police department in California and the Buffalo Grove police force in Illinois. According to Lt. Davis, the Atlanta police department's experience with wireless networking this weekend only added to their interest in the technology.
"Advancements like 802.11 help us do our jobs better," Lt. Davis said. "And that was certainly evident this weekend."
Charles Waltner is a freelance writer based in northern California.
