As the Olympic torch makes it way across China, I was curious to take a look at how the Games itself, touted as the "high-tech Olympics", will play out.

According to the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG), the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games will involve 37 venues, of which 31 are in Beijing. Events will also be held in six cities outside of Beijing. Hong Kong will host the equestrian events, while sailing, beach volleyball and some swimming competitions will be held in Qingdao, Shandong province. Preliminary soccer matches are being scheduled in Shanghai, Tianjin and Qinghuangdao in Hebei province, as well as in Shenyang, Liaoning province.

All this makes for a highly connected games, with 10,000 PCs, 1,000 servers, 5,000 results systems terminals and 4,000 printers, all looked after by 4,000 IT staff including volunteers, according to ENN.ie. While Atos Origin manages the IT infrastructure, a great deal of the network hardware will come from Cisco. From what I've been able to determine, some of the network technologies employed at the Games will include the following:

• Information security during the games fall under the Beijing Information Security Emergency Response and Treatment Center (BISERTC), the first of its kind in China. The center consists of ten 24-hour emergency teams covering issues such as viruses, network attacks, network invasions, network failures and emergency resource protection - ChinaTechNews
• The surveillance system, such as security cameras that cover all the Olympic venues will all run over IPv6 - NetworkWorld
• Reports state that each of the seven million tickets available for sale during the games will be embedded with a wireless radio frequency identification or RFID memory chip to help combat pirated tickets whilst speeding up entry into venues. - SDA Asia
• Cisco will implement the TelePresence 3000 system at China Netcom's headquarters and its data center just near the National Stadium (i.e. the Bird's Nest) - Shanghai Daily

What's your opinion on the technologies that will be used in Beijing's "high-tech" Olympics?