Medium Network

For larger events such as those that supply private network connectivity to judges rooms, volunteer spaces, and other ancilliary areas, a more substantial network is required. This network will be larger in 2 dimensions: the services that are offered and the physical footprint.

To enable more services to be offered, its time to add a small form factor server that's not a laptop. This will live with the core router and switching equipment. For logistics reasons, its recommended to set this equipment up wherever your pit administration area is since that's usually the first area that's up and the last area to come down. An SFF PC chassis running a basic Linux is a good choice for an event server since all applications that you may wish to deploy to it are available as Docker containers. Do not be scared by it being called a "server". This just refers to it being a dedicated machine that has no monitor and that nobody sits in front of. Once you configure the applications you want, there really isn't any additional configuration to be applied.

To be physically larger is just a matter of adding more ethernet switches, more wireless access points, and more cable. When running more than one access point, its a good idea to use a managed access point which can coordinate device roaming, otherwise you'll see issues when a device is in range of more than one access point and it cannot firmly consider one to be a better signal. If running a fully external network from the FMS, you should use externally managed access points. Aruba Instant access points are a good choice for this and can be had on ebay for little money. These access points self-host their control plane on whatever access point boots up first, and provide an intuitive web interface for configuration.

Let's look at the Capitol BEST network and the various components:

Pit AreaField AreaJudges RoomCore RouterCore SwitchOptical SwitchApplication ServerPhone (x110)Telephone SwitchRoot Access PointFMS Router (Scoring Box)Scoring Table SwitchAccess PointPhone (x111)IP CamerasStreaming ComputerJudges Room SwitchAccess PointPhone (x112)Conference Phone (x130) 1GBaseT1GBaseT (PoE)1GBaseT Peering1GBaseT (PoE)1GBaseT (PoE)1GBaseT1GBaseT (Peering SFP1)1GBaseT (PoE)1GBaseT (PoE)1GBaseT (PoE)1GBaseT1GBaseT (PoE)1GBaseT (PoE)1GBaseT (PoE)1000BaseSX1000BaseSX

Not pictured are several wireless belt-pack phones, various laptops connected in various locations, and the entire Gizmo FMS network that is behind the Gizmo router.

There are several things worth calling out in this network:

  • Phones! Capitol BEST makes use of a private telephone network to quickly and efficiently communicate point to point. We have both fixed phones and wireless phones for key staff. Usually we'll equip the pit admin, hub director and head referee with phones directly. This allows, for example, the head referee to effortlessly contact the pits without leaving the field. The phones are something that work well for Capitol BEST, but do not work for everyone and take some training to use.

  • Several links are optical. Each of the links above that's listed as 1000BaseSX is an optical fiber. We use these fibers since they can go up to 1600 meters without additional hardware, whereas ethernet tops out at 100 meters. While that's 300 feet (approx.) keep in mind that many schools in the Texas Hill Country have large courtyards, and a single courtyard can be in excess of 300' across.

  • Several links are referenced as Peering. These links are router-to-router links where we've configured the routers on each side to be aware of each other so that their address space is directly accessible. If you don't know what this means don't worry, its an optimization that helps us to coordinate this larger network.

This is a network that did not spring into existence overnight. Years of optimization, evaluation, and figuring out what does and doesn't work went into this architecture, and its extremely tightly aligned with the way that the team behind Capitol BEST works.