Good morning, Chuck I find it very interesting that the installation was optimized for much less than full capacity. With your scenario, that's smart! Good guidance on the AP placement. We have a full bowl catwalk, so likely mounting points for the bowl APs. Nobody likes the monthly charge, but I can certainly see the wisdom of off-loading the labor and liability for managing the separate network. I had never considered the network implications of pre-determined contracts with entertainers.
Thank you so much for sharing the details of your installation. [LSU]<http://www.lsu.edu/> Allen Toms Wireless Network Manager Information Technology Services Louisiana State University 200 Frey Computing Services , Baton Rouge, LA 70803 office 225-578-3763 alt...@lsu.edu<mailto:alt...@lsu.edu> | lsu.edu<http://www.lsu.edu/> ________________________________ From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> on behalf of Enfield, Chuck <cae...@psu.edu> Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2020 6:14 AM To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU <WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Requesting arena Wi-Fi feedback The people who run our 16,000 seat arena contract with AT&T for the Wi-Fi there. I was engaged in the requirements development, contract negotiations, and some of the implementation planning. I’ve also been involved periodically with troubleshooting. I have a decent idea what’s going on there, but I’m not necessarily privy to daily operational challenges. Here’s my brain dump, but I’m warning you - it’s not much of a brain. --Rough cost of installation? Is there an ongoing cost to the arena Wi-Fi provider? How much/month/year? Our Arena seat up to 16,000, but only one or two events a year get close to that attendance. 80% of the vents are 5000 or less, so we save some money by designing for that capacity with the understanding that Wi-Fi would perform poorly for larger events. AT&T actually overdesigned slightly, so the network is acceptable for events up to 6000-7000, depending on the floorplan. Three years ago the proposal for the full monte was about $1.3M OT and $5K monthly. --Description of the implementation (number and type of AP's, controllers, cabling, mounting points, etc.) Unfortunately, I didn’t retain a copy of the proposal, but the current implementation and full preproposal was mostly overhead APs in “the bowl” If your arena is similar to ours, there will also be a of APs at the gates (both inside and out), in the concourses, and back of house, so don’t overlook those areas. --How do customers connect to the arena Wi-Fi? Captive Portal --Do customers have to download an app on their device? We declined a custom app, but when considering it we never discussed making it required – it would have been an option for an improved fan experience. --Is there a service fee to the customer for any of the services provided? For season ticket holders? No. --What degree of security (no authentication, splash page requesting what info, etc.)? By connecting users agree to T&C’s. Liability for network use is AT&T’s rather than ours. --Separate network or integrated into campus network? Separate --How is the arena Wi-Fi traffic drained to the internet? We have a dedicated ISP circuit from AT&T. We could have used our internet access to reduce the operating cost, but there were reasons not to at the time. A separate ISP connection from AT&T costs significantly more than most of us pay for our internet bandwidth. AT&T’s solution only uses the ISP to get traffic from the arena to an AT&T POP where it gets NAT’d onto AT&T addresses, so there’s almost no risk in using your IPs for this network. --What value-added services are being utilized from the arena Wi-Fi solution? None --Did extra personnel need to be hired on to manage the solution? Because we outsourced, No. There is a significant effort involved with managing this network. Testing an tuning the RF, changing AP settings for different sized event and floorplans in the bowl, customizing settings back-of-house to meet the contractual requirements of the talent, coordinating RF with wireless controls in the arena and event-specific wireless equipment brought in by the talent, etc. Almost every event gets an adjustment of some mind. Most of them are the same type of thing over and over again, but it will take some time to do right. Keep in mind that the talent will sometimes have riders in the contract that include network requirements. You won’t be consulted about these. The contracts will get signed and you’ll have to fulfill the requirements. --Have you seen a notable change in customer feedback after the implementation? Yes. Except for the events we know are too large for the network we deployed, feedback has been positive. --What elements of the installation went well, what did not? Our arena is heavily used year-round, so finding time to do the installation was challenging. They scheduled a two-week shut-down for a variety of work in the venue, during which most of the Wi-Fi installation work was completed. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be entirely finished that quickly, so the remain work dragged out month with intermittent activity as the venue’s schedule allowed. ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.educause.edu%2Fcommunity&data=02%7C01%7Caltoms%40LSU.EDU%7C9d175b7958f24afe716d08d7c0fec83d%7C2d4dad3f50ae47d983a09ae2b1f466f8%7C0%7C0%7C637190072833150688&sdata=zbYPfBjSbsdWpiQBHeMoTCp4Yn1m%2FIkPqFShPUT6r5k%3D&reserved=0> ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community
