If you haven’t already, you’ll soon have to start making decisions about adding G2S to your world—measuring its potential against other capital improvements and making sure that the decisions you make will give your property excellent positioning in the years to come.

- Russ Ristine, G2S: How to Get There from Here

In this month’s Casino Enterprise Management magazine, Russ discusses the current state of G2S and how casinos can transition their current gaming floors to open, high-speed networks.

OK. I know how busy you are. So here’s the Cliff Notes version (which is not nearly as interesting or informative as the actual article that, did I mention, is here and only takes a few minutes to read, should you find the time).

Right now, your gaming floor network probably looks something like this . . .

(You can read about the pros and cons of proprietary gaming floors here.)

Here’s one solution for transitioning to an open, high-speed network . . .

Note that your first step into the world of the open, high-speed networked gaming floors does not have to be the transition of your entire floor – convert a single area or bank of machines with an eye toward transitioning the rest of your floor as it makes sense to do so.

This step is important because it is when you make decisions that will impact your floor for years to come – and you will have lots of decisions to make. Remember, you want your floor to be extensible and to be able to support standard third-party applications as new features are developed. For these reasons, your EGMs must be able communicate with at least six hosts (to accommodate a download server, regulatory server, marketing server, slot performance server and a couple for future innovations).

Once you have the basic network structure in place, you can start adding application servers to bring new features quickly and easily to your floor . . .

And, viola! As your G2S network matures and your team becomes comfortable with the new environment, you’ll be ready to expand the network across your gaming floor when the time comes.