As we in the United States watch the Olympic Games televised from Beijing over the next couple of weeks, Chinese security personnel will be watching over the Games via IP-based surveillance cameras, thanks to networking provided by 3Com's Chinese subsidiary H3C Technologies.

H3C says it helped the Beijing Public Transportation Group (BPT Group) to build an IP-based monitoring system to monitor bus stations, more than 500 parking lots and even special Olympic bus lines outfitted with wireless cameras. There are 10,000 monitoring points in the system connected via Ethernet Passive Optical Network technology.

H3C notes that its network also helps with vehicle dispatching, arrival and departure monitoring, VoIP access, office automation, IC card auto ticket examination, electronic route information and station billboards.

H3C's IP Video Surveillance gear was installed at the Hong Kong Olympic Equestrian Venues in Shatin and Beas River and was used at an equestrian event last year, an event which H3C says was an "opportunity to test the security and emergency response during live events at 2008 Olympic venues."

In addition, the Beijing Capital International Airport added a third terminal to handle the many visitors from around the world, and H3C says its products are providing the 10 Gigabit Ethernet backbone to support airport operations, flight information displays and broadcasting throughout the terminal.

H3C says it also helped Sohu develop the infrastructure for serving up video on demand from the official Chinese Web site of the Beijing Olympics. The company says its networked storage enables the site to access video in three seconds.

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.