Another lengthy sporting event, another round of warnings that streaming video traffic could flood corporate networks. This time it's the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing that are raising alarms.

With the opening ceremony scheduled for Friday, Aug. 8, IT executives are gearing up for increased video traffic. A poll of 35 CIOs conducted by Blue Coat Systems in July showed that 95% regarded Internet-delivered Olympics video as one of their top concerns. According to the vendor, which makes WAN optimization and Web security gear, the threat of saturated Internet connections and network links is real.

In the U.S., NBC is expected to offer 2,200 hours of live video coverage to online viewers and 3,000 hours of on-demand video content, including full event replays. How does that compare to previous Olympics? NBC only offered one streaming-video presentation during past Olympics -- a single hockey game streamed live during the 2006 Winter Games in Torino, Italy.

This time up to 20 simultaneous live streams of different Olympic events will be available at peak times, according to Blue Coat. With that kind of material, it’s possible that “anywhere from two to 14 employees watching Olympics coverage simultaneously could dominate a network gateway, impairing other internal business traffic from getting through,” Blue Coat asserts.

The vendor offers a few tips about instituting network policies, to counter the effects of employees accessing live and on-demand video and ensure that a company’s Internet gateway is available for business use. For starters, companies should make sure IT and human resources managers have discussed the potential for network problems and evaluated the company’s policy on restricting employees’ access to online Olympic video content, as appropriate.

“Some companies may want to block all streaming video across their network, while others may want to just block access to Olympic Web sites, or block video only during business hours,” Blue Coat says.

If there are any policy changes, companies should notify management and employees in advance.

“Employees’ access of online video has been a growing a concern for many organizations, but the sheer magnitude of available Olympics coverage online poses a greater threat to the efficiency of corporate networks than anything in the past,” said Bethany Mayer, a senior vice president at Blue Coat, in a statement. “Organizations around the world should brace for the demands of online video to the network so that business operations can continue unchanged and organizations can manage potential losses in productivity.”

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.