The internet is one part of the AV world that most people don’t realize is crucial to today’s events. Many people use some part of the internet every day. It is a huge shift in our culture. None of it really existed 10 or 20 years ago. The internet started out as a basic way of connecting devices through text message boards across a larger distance than was previously possible. If you have ever seen an older movie like War Games you will see what it was like back at that time. It ran on copper analog phone lines and a graphical/visual interface was cutting edge back then.
As the internet matured, so did the technology it was built on. Fiber slowly started replacing the older copper lines. Fiber is faster and could handle heavier loads than copper. At first the internet trunk lines that physically connected the whole of the internet were upgraded. Over time more of the network was switched over to fiber. Today, you can probably get an internet connection from your home directly to the trunk line all through fiber lines.
Most sides of the AV industry currently run on nothing more than regular laptops. When I started most control surfaces were actually very specialized computers. They were in fancy cases with special software so that you would never know you were trusting your whole livelihood to Windows 98 just like your home computer. This still holds true for most sides of AV.
Audio, video, and lighting consoles are almost all custom computers running custom operating systems now. Because of this it makes it very easy to connect these systems together through a wifi or ethernet network. It is also generally easy to connect laptops, tablets and even your smartphone to these systems.
However, sometimes what should just work doesn’t. Networking can be one of the trickiest parts of the AV world. When it does not work it can be very complicated to fix. Usually in this business most of the time when something doesn’t work it is because a button needs to get pushed or a cable is unplugged. You can read more about that here – Signal Flow.
I will go more in depth about networking, the internet, and how it all connects to AV at another time. Come back soon for more articles where we will break down networking into more digestible bites and explain it for you. What was your first experience with the internet? Leave your reply in the comments below. Don’t forget to tell us what you want to know more about and we will add it to the list of future topics!