ITWorld Canada is reporting that the Rolling Stones are using wireless technology for their Forty Licks world tour. The technology was deployed by Todd Griffith, IT specialist for the band, who is leaving the Stones.
For Griffith, it was all tech, plugs and rock 'n' roll until about a year ago, when he realized he could drastically decrease the amount of plugs required at a concert venue by deploying wireless networks instead of a traditional wired network.
Now he's no longer consumed by stringing up cable, instead strategically deploying wireless access points, gateways, wireless PC cards and building-to-building gateways.
Not only it helps for the concerts, but the wireless network has other usages.
Instead of seeing society as a collection of clearly defined “interest groups,” society must be reconceptualized as a complex network of groups of interacting individuals whose membership and communication patterns are seldom confined to one such group alone.
—Diana Crane (b. 1933)
Griffith has been employed by the Rolling Stones, making it possible for the band's crew to update the rollingstones.com Web site and keep in contact with their families via e-mail. He has also enabled the production crew to receive large computer-aided design drawings of each venue. Griffith said they normally get speeds of 1.5M to 3Mbit/sec., similar to a Digital Subscriber Line connection.
And what about the costs?
Not only did Griffith say that the total cost of ownership is a lot lower with wireless, but the network rollout time is also drastically reduced, usually taking one to two hours to set up. He added that he's thrilled that the IT crew doesn't have to cart around equipment for a full-fledged network while on tour.
Griffith's network is an 802.11b wireless network with hardware almost exclusively from Santa Clara, Calif.-based 3Com Corp., consisting of wireless-enabled notebook computers and other hardware. He said he selected 3Com because the company took an interest in this type of deployment and has excellent technical support.
Today the two cities seem to stand in contrast to each another. Florence has become a bustling and vital modern city. Whilst it may no longer nurture Michelangelos and Botticellis, there are native Florentine painters of international renown. Its ancient craft of leatherwork plays a distinctive role in contemporary fashion, and Florentines have effectively revived the old skills with stuffs and dyes and organized their distribution on a scale which dwarfs the network of the once ubiquitous Medici banks. Venice instead is apparently a city belonging only to her past, an empty shell of former glories. Its native population diminishes constantly, deserting the island for the industrial wasteland that threatens to destroy what is left of millennial grandeur. Its last remaining industry makes baubles for the tourists who come in droves to stay on a statistical average of eighteen hours, to mill about and to gawk at the remaining relics of the Seremissima’s magnificence.
—Peter Lauritzen. Venice: A Thousand Years of Culture and Civilization, preface, Atheneum (1978)
If you happen to see the Stones in concert, bring your laptop with you and use their bandwidth for blogging the show.
For more information, you also can read this older BBC News article, "Wireless net helps Stones roll on."
Sources: Rebecca Reid, ITWorld Canada, July 30, 2003; BBC News, May 14, 2003.