3

I have an one day event in July 2012, hosting 250 attendees for a social media event. We will be uploading live video to a website, allowing the press to access the web, and some vendors will be showing off their web sites for clients and visitors. The staff will need access for uploading files and information as needed. We had the event last year and tried a cable modem brought in with 2x2 megs just for the streaming video which worked well. I had 4 wireless hot spots, rented from a company 1.5 mbps x 780 kbps, which was were a complete failure. I was assured the 4 hot spots would be enough, but they did not work.

What would be the proper way to get the bandwidth required to make the one day event successful? The setting is a Private Country Club where running cables everywhere is very tough.

Kyle Smith
  • 9,563
  • 1
  • 30
  • 32
Bob G
  • 31
  • 1
  • 1
    Relevant: http://serverfault.com/questions/72767/why-is-internet-access-and-wi-fi-always-so-terrible-at-large-tech-conferences – Tarnay Kálmán Apr 03 '12 at 22:48
  • 2
    How many people/devices do you want to support? Are there other wireless networks in the areas, or devices that use wireless network frequencies? For each class of activities, do you know how much bandwidth you want to support? Is your router/firewall capable of QOS, and do you know how to use it? – becomingwisest Apr 03 '12 at 22:51
  • if running cables is difficult, I have seen 802.11g/n WiFi access points used, that plug directly into 802.11a bridges for backhaul. That way you can disperse your access points, and use a totally different wireless spectrum for linking them all together. I make no guarantees about how well this will scale though. – Mark Henderson Apr 03 '12 at 22:54

1 Answers1

0

Consider a wireless network that bonds multiple wireless channels together to provide greater bandwidth. Wireless N with a good MIMO array can reach 450Mbps. For example, Xirrus WAPs. Create a mesh network with them and you'll not have to deal with wires. Only the largest of deployments would saturate that kind of mesh (think: stadiums). You can easily make it so that the wireless network is not the bottleneck but rather the internet connection.

Wesley
  • 32,320
  • 9
  • 80
  • 116