Video streaming is not usually permitted for employees to casually use on the New York Eye & Ear Infirmary's network because it gobbles up valuable capacity needed by mission-critical applications, such as medically-related videoconferencing or radiology. However, for the Obama inaugural event, the Infirmary devised a plan that temporarily lifted the streaming ban so employees could watch it live, without disrupting specific medical application use.

"We removed pretty much all the restrictions bandwidth-wise on streaming," says Gene Harrison, network engineer in the New York Eye & Ear Infirmary's information systems department.

The IT department worked with top management to craft a strategy to let employees enjoy the inauguration live. "This was a special exception today," Harrison says.

Around 9 a.m. Tuesday the IT department sent out an e-mail to hundreds of the Infirmary's employees telling them they could watch the inaugural event live from their PCs, suggesting they might visit and requesting they share desktops for this purpose, if possible, to conserve bandwidth.

"After 10 a.m., usage spiked to 14 megabits, then at the inaugural ceremony around 11 a.m. we hit 16 to 17 megabits, and then 21," Harrison says. "We had allocated 25 megabits for streaming."