Why Conference Wi-Fi Sucks and How toImprove It

by Esme Vos

I was inspired to do a long article about Wi-Fi

at conferences by Joel Spolsky’sarticleWi-Fi At Conferenceswhere he asks why Wi-Fi works so poorly at techconferences. Muniwireless has organized conferences in the past and I won’t saythat the Wi-Fi at our events has ben the very best either (however, it was betterthan at most events I’ve attended). You would think that by now, Wi-Fi access atconferences, especially tech events, would be something no one would evennotice — that is, it should just work well. But that’s rarely the case.Dewayne Hendricks (who has provided Wi-Fi at David Isenberg’s Freedom ToConnect events in Washington DC, Social Capital 2009 in San Francisco, WestCoast Green 2009 in San Francisco and others) pointed out that in many hotelsand conference centers, the existing Wi-Fi network can handle only 20 to 25connections at one time and the bandwidth for the network is barely enough forpeople who are downloading and

uploading data

.Conferences today have to deal with people who are updating blogs, Twitterfeeds, and Facebook pages, and who are sending photos, video clips, and reports.Some attendees are also using Skype and other VOIP applications. Unfortunately,many venues are too cheap to install new 802.11n access points, and because thebandwidth that feeds into the network is too paltry, the conference organizer – ifit wants to guarantee a good Wi-Fi experience – will have to bring in both theaccess points AND the bandwidth (for example, Covad). This dramaticallyincreases the cost of hosting an event. (

Note: Dewayne used Apple AirportExtreme 802.11n access points which worked very well at the Freedom toConnect event held in March 2009 at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring, MD,which attracted 200 people. I attended this event and would rate the Wi-Fiexperience outstanding.

)

Why Conference Wi-Fi Sucks and How To Improve It - by Esme Vos, Muniwireless 19 Nov 2009

Here is a sample quote (dated September 2009) from a well-known bandwidthprovider for bringing in (wireless) bandwidth into a venue (each amount quotedbelow is a one-time fee). This is just the bandwidth; it does not include theaccess points, the fee charged by the Wi-Fi service providers for installing theaccess points, managing the event’s Wi-Fi network, dealing with problems andmeltdowns, etc.•5 Mbps: $3999•10 Mbps: $5999•20 Mbps: $9999•30 Mbps: $11,999•45 Mbps: $16,999Andy Abramson, founder ofComunicano, agrees with Dewayne’s assessment of hotel Wi-Fi and adds that most hotels have less than 5 MB of connectivity. Somehotels limit the number of users to 250 concurrent users. Andy believes thathotels have not realized how much Wi-Fi

means to an event’s (and the hotel’s)reputation. Most conference attendees rate Wi-Fi connectivity as one of the threemost important needs at a conference.

Q&A with Tim Pozar on how to improve conference Wi-Fi

I wanted to unravel the mystery surrounding what it takes to bring good Wi-Fi toconferences by asking Tim Pozar, a network engineer who has been hired byconferences such as TechCrunch 2009, Intel Developers Forum, SNAP and more.Below is our Q&A.

(1)Why is Wi-Fi service so horrible at most conferences, includingat

hotelswhere there’s alreadyWi-Fi and/or wired broadband? What can you do to improve Wi-Fi service?

There are several reasons.

In the case of built-in Wi-Fi at hotels, they really don’tdesign it for

conferences. They design it for general guest use around thehotel.

They install a minimal set of access points and don’t use a number of thetricks

we have used for conferences. Also, on-site hotel staff usually do

not havetechnical expertise to address issues. Most of these installs were done by thirdparties that may not currently have a support contract

with the hotel. If they do,or if the hotel supports it, it is done

off-site by some remote network operationscenter (NOC).

Why Conference Wi-Fi Sucks and How To Improve It - by Esme Vos, Muniwireless 19 Nov 2009

Where a conference organizer brings in an company to provide Wi-Fi access andthe network fails, it can be

for a number of reasons. Typically I see smallcompanies that are

trying to grow larger and don’t test the deployment or thinkthrough all

the failure points that can happen with a large-scaledeployment.

When I was called in to solve the Wi-Fi problems at TechCrunch2008, the wireless

provider had some serious problems, not the least of whichwas the DHCP

server they were running, which only supported 250 or so leases.Needless to

say, that alone stopped the use of the wireless network pretty earlyon

in the conference until I came in to fix it.I also notice that many vendors just don’t understand RF propagation and how

tomanage it. They think that more is better: more access points and/ormore

power. In most cases, this is the opposite of what you want to do as it

justcongests the spectrum even more. There are a number of tricks that we

use atMSI to try to manage the spectrum.

Redundancy plays a big part of a deployment.

If you have a conference

thatdepends on broadband for the success of the event, you can’t have a

single pointof failure. Having multiple transit providers, DHCP

servers, etc. are critical asthings fail all the time. Having any

service fail will likely make the deploymentunusable and worthless for

the event organizer.

(2)Why haven’t hotels and conference centers done much to improvethe

quality of wireless broadband for conference organizers who arealready

paying a lot of money to host events at these locations?

Good question. It seems that large hotel chains could make this a profitable

item,but as with most hotels, they figure they have a captured event and

don’t needto put any more effort into this. Also, as mentioned above,they have had third parties come in and do the deployment.

One size does not fitall events and they almost never have technical staff on site to address theproblems of this deployment because it costs too much to keep them on thehotel’s payroll.

(3)Why do most conference organizers fail to provide good Wi-Fi?

Ignorance? Cheapness? Both?

Both. You get what you pay for. MSI’s deployments include a

significant staff thatcan deploy and address problems during the event

quickly. The network engineersthat MSI uses (including me) are

veterans of decades of networking experience. Ihave seen a number of

wireless providers who think all they need is a broadband

Why Conference Wi-Fi Sucks and How To Improve It - by Esme Vos, Muniwireless 19 Nov 2009