Background
Cheltenham Racecourse, operated by The Jockey Club, stands as one of British horse racing’s most prestigious venues. Home to The Festival, the pinnacle of National Hunt racing, the racecourse welcomes approximately 67,500 spectators during major race days, creating an atmosphere that rivals the largest football stadiums in scale and intensity.
For decades, the venue relied on a legacy public address system. The aging infrastructure, which included components 30 to 50 years old, featured traditional railway station-style paging horns and plastic speakers that delivered sound quality that isn’t up to today’s standards. The system lacked centralized management, monitoring, or modern control capabilities, making adjustments cumbersome and customer experience inconsistent.
Challenge
The Jockey Club contacted Audiotek AV, who have previous experience at other Jockey Club venues, including Epsom Racecourse and Newmarket Racecourse, as well as diverse applications in corporate spaces, entertainment venues, nightclubs, and hotels. They implemented a QSC Q-SYS control system across the entire site, enabling centralized management of all audio zones and room controls. The outdoor PA system was replaced with L-Acoustics concert-grade speakers. Emergency communications was upgraded to meet modern safety standards, and sophisticated room control systems were installed throughout hospitality suites and the grandstand.
At the heart of this transformation was the need for a network infrastructure capable of supporting multiple audio protocols simultaneously, including Dante, AES67, and AVB, while providing the reliability and redundancy demanded by a facility where communications failures could impact both customer experience and safety.
Modernizing Cheltenham Racecourse’s audio infrastructure presented technical challenges that extended beyond typical AV installations. The project required meeting
stringent safety standards mandated for large sporting venues while simultaneously delivering concert-quality sound across a complex outdoor environment of hard concrete surfaces, multiple elevation changes, and varied acoustic spaces.
Requirements
The networking infrastructure faced several critical requirements:
Reliability: Racing commentary must be heard clearly at the finish line without interruption. Any network failure during a race would damage the venue’s operations and reputation. The system needed to support continuous operation during multi-day events with zero tolerance for downtime.
Dual Network Redundancy: Safety standards require complete redundancy for emergency PA systems. The solution needed two entirely independent networks (LAN A and LAN B) that could operate simultaneously, with critical racing and paging connections running on both networks while non-critical systems utilized single connections to optimize costs.
Multi-Protocol Audio Support: The network had to seamlessly handle Dante, AES67, and AVB protocols simultaneously, supporting the L-Acoustics speaker system, Q-SYS control platform, and various audio processing equipment from multiple manufacturers. Each protocol has specific network requirements for multicast streaming, latency, and quality of service.
Scale: Approximately 20 kilometers/12.4 miles of fiber optic cabling connects equipment locations spread across the expansive racecourse site. The network infrastructure is needed to maintain performance and reliability across these extended distances.
Simplified Management: The system required intuitive management that AV technicians could navigate without extensive networking training. The solution needed to provide visibility into both networks simultaneously while preventing accidental cross-connections that could compromise redundancy.
Future Scalability: While the immediate application focused solely on audio networking, the infrastructure needed to support future expansion. Future IPTV deployments and increased video capabilities meant the network backbone required headroom beyond current capacity.
The project team needed networking hardware specifically designed for professional AV applications. The equipment had to handle multicast audio streams efficiently, provide the port density and fiber connectivity required by the distributed architecture, and deliver enterprise-grade reliability with management tools accessible to audio engineers rather than IT networking specialists.
“If I’m not sure about something, I can contact NETGEAR support, and within a couple of hours, I’m talking to someone who knows what I’m talking about. Other brands providing this type of hardware don’t know what these AV protocols are. Whereas NETGEAR… We talk the same language, which to me is invaluable.”
— Ash Attwood, Audio Visual System Designer at Audiotek
Solution
The integration team selected NETGEAR’s M4250 series AV switches as the foundation for Cheltenham’s dual redundant network infrastructure, specifically choosing the 10G XF (fiber) models to create a high-performance backbone capable of supporting current audio requirements while providing substantial headroom for future expansion.
The solution implements two completely independent star topology networks. This architecture provides both redundancy and geographic fault tolerance, ensuring that no single point of failure can disrupt critical racing and safety communications. Each location features both a primary switch (connected to LAN A) and a secondary switch (connected to LAN B), utilizing a combination of NETGEAR M4250-10G2XF-PoE++ (10-port 2.5G with 2x 10G SFP+ uplinks) and M4250-26G2XF-PoE++ (26-port 2.5G with 2x 10G SFP+ uplinks) models. The 10G SFP+ fiber uplinks from each access switch connect back to the respective core, creating two entirely separate network fabrics that operate independently.
The geographic separation of core switches provides an additional layer of resilience beyond traditional network redundancy. If a catastrophic failure affects one end of the facility, whether power loss, equipment failure, or physical damage, the network continues operating from the opposite core, ensuring uninterrupted service for racing commentary and emergency announcements.
The dual network architecture presented a unique management challenge: how to provide unified visibility and control over two networks that must remain completely isolated for redundancy. The solution leverages the NETGEAR Engage management platform with an innovative approach: configuring LAN A and LAN B as two separate sites within the management interface.
This “two-site” configuration enables network administrators to monitor and manage both networks from a single management PC while maintaining complete logical separation. A simple dropdown menu allows instant switching between LAN A and LAN B views, providing simultaneous visibility into both network fabrics without risk of accidental cross-connection or configuration errors that could compromise redundancy.
The M4250 series’ AV-optimized interface proved essential for the audio engineering team. Pre-configured profiles for Dante and other audio protocols eliminated the need for complex VLAN configuration and multicast setup, allowing the team to deploy a production-ready network without extensive networking expertise. When questions did arise, NETGEAR’s AV-focused technical support provided guidance specific to audio networking rather than generic IT networking advice.
Results
Prior to the first race day, the integration team conducted comprehensive failure testing, deliberately unplugging switches, simulating power failures, and stress-testing the redundancy architecture. The network’s resilience to these challenges confirmed that the infrastructure could withstand real-world failure scenarios without impacting operations, providing confidence for venue management and regulatory compliance for safety systems.
The NETGEAR-based infrastructure successfully completed its first racing weekend with flawless performance, supporting the complete audio ecosystem across the 67,500-capacity venue without a single network-related interruption. The transformation from a 30-50-year-old legacy PA system to concert-grade audio quality has fundamentally enhanced the spectator experience while meeting all safety and emergency communication requirements.
“It all comes back to one thing: it’s easy. The NETGEAR M4250 series can do what you want if you need advanced features, but if you just need to get it working reliably, it’s easy.”
— Ash Attwood, Audio Visual System Designer at Audiotek
“The technical support that makes the difference. Without big support contracts, it’s just the standard of what NETGEAR does.”
— Ash Attwood, Audio Visual System Designer at Audiotek
“I’ve worked with Audiotek on multiple venues, and their expertise with NETGEAR equipment gives us tremendous confidence. NETGEAR switches have consistently delivered the rock-solid performance we need for mission-critical racing operations, and the ease of management means our teams can focus on delivering exceptional experiences rather than troubleshooting network issues.”
— Gemma Steve, Regional Head of Operations at The Jockey Club
Why NETGEAR was chosen
- AV-specialized Technical Support: NETGEAR’s support team speaks the language of professional audio and video, understanding protocols like Dante, AES67, and AVB.
- Pre-configured profiles: The M4250 series includes pre-configured profiles for over 500 manufacturing partners, eliminating the need for complex VLAN setup and multicast configuration.
- Centralized Management: NETGEAR Engage enables monitoring and managing both redundant networks from a single interface with the innovative two-site configuration approach.
- Future-Proof Scalability: The 10G fiber backbone significantly exceeds current audio bandwidth requirements, providing substantial headroom for future expansions.
- Enterprise Reliability Without Enterprise Costs: NETGEAR provides comprehensive technical support as standard, without requiring expensive support contracts typical of enterprise networking vendors. This accessibility reduces the total cost of ownership while ensuring rapid issue resolution.
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