[chicken]

assuming that it is not bbo who are responsible 4 the many disconnects in estoril everybody who is interested in livecoverage of wbf-events should send a mail to:

president@worldbridge.org

claiming that in future only associations should be allowed to host major events who can guarantee stable internetconnections @ the playingsite.

[uday]

Harassing the officials of the WBF would only damage our collective cause.


It is hardly the fault of the WBF that the internet connectivity in the host country is not perfect. Or it is perfect and an upstream ISP is having problems. Or all is well there and an ISP somewhere inbetween Portugal and the US is having problems

There is lots of room for improvement but I think this stuff has come a long way in a few years.

[chicken]

ok, i didnt intend starting harrassing officials. so let us all post to our national
bridge associations, so that they can mention this issue in their talks with the wbf. this procedure of going the official way through all levels of official representation pleases my german brain anyway. :-)

[Erkson]

uday, on Oct 24 2005, 12:45 PM, said:

Harassing the officials of the WBF would only damage our collective cause.


It is hardly the fault of the WBF that the internet connectivity in the host country is not perfect.  Or it is perfect and an upstream ISP is having problems. Or all is well there and an ISP somewhere inbetween Portugal and the US is having problems

There is lots of room for improvement but I think this stuff has come a long way in a few years.

Do you suggest that if the WBF President receives 6000 e-mails complaining with the bad connectivity in Portugal, he will think :
"These vugraph fans bother me. I will punish them next time"
instead of:
"This is a real problem and next time I will do my best to solve it. That's my job."
?

[Walddk]

Constructive criticism should be welcomed by the WBF. It is a bad idea to rely on a local server as is the case in Portugal. It's fine for the 60+ spectators in the onsite theatre, but it's bad for the 8,000 or more online viewers.

I know that Dave Thompson managed to talk the WBF out of it before Sydney. It's much better to create a stable internet connection (broadband) using ethernet cables (and definitely not wireless).

Telling this to the responsible people in the WBF should be clear and accepted with gratitude, since the aim must be to promote bridge worldwide. They may not believe me when I say this, but at least Dave Thompson knows what he is talking about. He has tried it all by now.

Roland

[mrdct]

uday, on Oct 24 2005, 07:45 AM, said:

It is hardly the fault of the WBF that the internet connectivity in the host country is not perfect.

It is entirely the WBF's fault. The venue selection criteria must surely include a high-quality, high-speed broadband internet connection with a 99.98% uptime guarantee. If the host country and/or convenor can't commit and deliver to the event specifications, they should hold it somewhere else.

In Sydney, I was quite strongly opposed to having a local server (which was the WBF's initial preference) for a number of reasons:

- hassle to setup;
- unfamiliarity with that type of configuration;
- distorted emphasis on quality of service for the onsite presentation at the potential expense of the online audience which will hundreds of times larger;
- known track record of uptime for BBO's USA-based server (including it's own support structure);
- expected high-quality broadband connection on-site with dial-up back-up.

I don't know the full technical details of how the local server interacts with the main BBO server to present the vugraph to the online audience, but it's apparent that correction of problems and resumption after interuptions seems very problematic.

Sydney was not, however, devoid of problems with the 3rd match of the day on several days experiencing some connection problems as the venue was on a wireless link being shared by other subscribers. The back-up dial-up connection was brought into play a few times and used throughout the final, but I think overall we provided pretty good coverage.

BBO works fine over a dial-up connection as the amount of data involved is quite small. I've successfully run three table coverage with a single dial-up connection in the past without any problems. If the venue's broadband in Estoril is sub-standard, I'd suggest giving dial-up a try.

[uday]

Quote

It is a bad idea to rely on a local server

The local server assures the organizers that the here-and-now customers in the vug. auditorium are assured a presentation. As a bonus, if internet connectivity is available, the invisible audience (us) gets a vugraph "for free."

Quote

how the local server interacts with the main BBO server t

It is ugly enough. The local server clones the vugraph session onto the main BBO server. If the connection is lost, it reconnects as best it can, and sends up the entire session again. The local audience does not notice any of this.

Problems creep in when there are other vugraphs running on the main BBO during all this. The cloning is not very smart. If other vugraphs are discouraged, as they are during Estoril, things rate to work decently.


It would be a lot simpler and safer to connect directly to the main BBO. This is what the ACBL does at its NABCs. However, the drawback is that the local vug audience is exposed to outages.


At the ACBL, Rick Beye seems to bend over backwards to preserve the broadcasts and always finds people to run the machines. Sometimes they're volunteeers, sometimes they're staff. Connecting to the main BBO makes the process quite routine. The connections are usually decent. When they're not, the audience doesnt usually start smashing windows.

[mrdct]

Whilst the local server may be beneficial for the handful of people in the vugraph auditorium, it is significantly inconvenient for the thousands of online spectators - many of whom are the very demographic that the WBF is seeking to promote the game to.

The thinking should be that BBO and its army of volunteer operators and commentators provide a service to thousands of bridge fans all over the world and, as a bonus, local organisers (if they are clever enough to pick a venue with a decent internet connection or even a stable analog phone line) get to use the BBO vugraph feed for their onsite auditorium presentation for free!

Even with a few expected internet outages, of which there seem to be about two or three per match in Estoril, if the "normal" broadcast model of using the main BBO server was used, reconnection is fairly straight-forward without any loss of data.

If the WBF can't source a venue with a reliable internet connection, that is unequivocally the fault of the WBF.

What can be done in the immediate term to improve the quality of service to the online audience? Obviously the infrastructure and other technical issues will need to be looked at by someone onsite, but the sorts of things I would look at are:

1. Continue to use the local server approach, but revert to a dial-up internet connection for the connectivity to the outside world.

2. Have a look at the extent of sharing of the venue's internet connection during match times and perhaps look at enabling rate limits on non-critical ports on the venue's router to channel a decent amount of dedictated bandwidth to BBO.

3. If a local wireless network is being used, do a mini-site survey with NetStumbler or similar to make sure you aren't getting cross-channel interference with other nearby networks. In my experience, wireless is only reliable for BBO if you have direct line of sight to the access point. Consider going out and buying a box of computer cable and hard-wiring the BBO machines.

4. Get on to the venue's ISP and see if you can move to a plan with higher bandwidth and/or better service continuity.

5. See if we can find some volunteer operators anywhere in world who would be willing to replicate Swan's coverage which will have the dual effect of delivering an extra match to the BBO audience and keeping a vugraph show of some description happening as and when problems arise with the local coverage.

[chicken]

at least a discussion about responsibilities has started. i think wbf still sees internet bridge as kind of a threat to its own business instead of realizing the incredible potential which lies in it. here in germany dbv is strictly anti-internet bridge claiming that members leave association towards internetsites, but if u use bbo properly with some concept for teaching and competition u will get more people playing in ur club/association than leaving.
(ooops, started a new thread i guess) i move it tomorrow somewhere else... :-)))

[Erkson]

I didn't notice any interruption since some days, and I am very happy.

I would be interested in knowing what has been done and how the problem has been solved.

TIA
Erkson