Alert!

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Paulick Reports on Penn National

"United Tote personnel informed track officials about a communications router failure just as the second race was beginning, Chris McErlean, vice president of racing for Penn National, told the Paulick Report. “The stop betting command which is initiated here did not go out on track or anywhere in the network,” McErlean said. “The pools remained open and were opened well past the finish of the race.”

more

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I would like to know how the entire netwrok is set-up. If anyone reading this (like a tote employee) knows the ins and outs, if you have the time please send HANA an email with the network topology and what data and signal s get sent where and when.

Rather than relying solely on a stop betting signal going out, I don't understand why it's not set up with a fail safe, i.e. send out a keep betting signal every few seconds. If you lose comms, you quit taking bets, period.

Knowing there is not a fail safe, so losing comms doesn't result in any visible action that we as bettors see -- it gives very little confidence that comms aren't constantly going down.

Essentially the track in question could be hit by a nuclear bomb blast, and the pools would stay open at the simulcast joints until someone on site thought to shut them down, is that right? Is that really how this system is set up?

-- Raleigh