The 49ers' plan to build the greatest stadium Wi-Fi network of all time
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Basically no one carries wifi-only devices. But the cell phone network at sports stadiums is many times over capacity. Given the different technologies involved, it is probably way, way cheaper to build out wifi capacity to serve everyone than it would be to build out cell capacity to serve everyone.Stone":2jcd16sl said:
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digitalizard
Ars Praefectus
Chuckstar":2d83se5k said:
This is a good point. The app would be pointing at almost entirely internal content, as well as the POS traffic obviously.
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Chuckstar":kuffjtfg said:
I don't agree with that summarization. It doesn't say others don't have 100% coverage. The easiest part is blanketing the air space. (Not saying its easy...) It's usable WiFi that is the key.
"But Williams said 100 percent Wi-Fi coverage with no bandwidth caps could be done in any type of stadium, no matter how old. He says the "spectrum shortage" in stadiums is just a myth."
Again, bold statements considering there doesn't seem to be simple acknowledgement of the existing technical challenges.
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Chuckstar":1bww8tfs said:
5 ghz won't save you when you have 1000 people trying to get spectrum slots on overlapping AP channels due to AP density.
Also anyone worth their salt already does layer 3 based AP management and design on anything but trivial networks. This doesn't help you when the bottleneck is way before that though - it's *layer 1*. It's also the same reason that it doesn't matter if the video is locally served at the stadium. If you can't get enough spectrum slices / airtime from the AP you're not going to hit the server, no matter where it is.
edit: typos
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The math is wrong.
At 20mb/s per person x 68,500 = 1.37tb of throughput.
At 40mb/s per person x 68,500 = 2.74tb of throughput.
So 1 terabit total capacity will in fact be taxed if every single Ticket Holder were to run at peak at the same time.
And this doesn't include support staff throughout the stadium.
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Isn't this exactly what Xirrus does? More radios, directional antennas, adjusts power and channels so they don't overlap...
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fryhole":1mahunl5 said:
Given the maximum N link rate of 65Mbps on a single 20MHz channel, two-three mobile devices will consume the bandwidth on that channel. So unless they plan on installing 22,833 radios, they can't achieve simultaneous WiFi connections for the entire stadium. There are simply physical limitations here being ignored.
It's nice to see WiFi technology improving in these venues, but I'd still look for the empirical data. You can really only get this from existing installations. The rest is conjecture.
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deepcube":171a7kcp said:
Xirrus simply clusters their radios into a single enclosure with narrow antenna characteristics. It's arguably simpler to deploy for a smaller application, but doesn't solve co-channel interfere and could be more challenging when you can't separate your radios in a high density deployment of this scale.
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In the spirit of this article giving carte blanche to say whatever the heck you want without giving details:
That is one hideous stadium.
Go Seahawks!
That is one hideous stadium.
Go Seahawks!
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This really is a fluff piece. Ars, you're better than this! I can read this on the 49'ers website.
Please go back to your usual standard of high-quality, detailed features.
Please go back to your usual standard of high-quality, detailed features.
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I was already feeling like this was a lot of typically facebook styled talk (as in, lots of hot air bravado with little substance in terms of details) even before it reached
At which point I felt positively cheated. Yes, WIFI for an entire stadium is an engineering feat. Just like many things are. I'm not a WIFI/network engineer so I'm not about to lambast their work. And the technical details are interesting to me still, even if the extent of my knowledge is more messing with home and small business networks, plus a little abstract theory. So the technical details are interesting. When there are relevant technical details to provide, which they were too cagey to offer.
What would have made this interesting, even with all of the closed lips on details, would have been if they were claiming to have solved the 2.4GHz problem. At least there could have been some fun speculation as to whether they were bluffing or had actually found some interesting, novel solution. But after getting nearly halfway through the article, we find out that when 2.4 comes up, the hot air immediately leaves the sails. Instead of declarative statements amounting to "everything will work splendidly for everyone," we get the cagey "less interference," which could amount to basically "business as usual but slightly less bumpy."
This article really could have done with that being more up front (say, in the first few paragraphs), and a little less of them patting themselves on their own backs for what they then admit to being simply a matter of waiting for the right tech to show up to make it practical (there goes nearly a page and a half? since it's not as if they said much of anything relevant). And we'll just wait and see what 5 GHz penetration on mobile devices is really like when this goes live. Granted, I'm sure they're banking on less than 100% usage in either case.
At which point I felt positively cheated. Yes, WIFI for an entire stadium is an engineering feat. Just like many things are. I'm not a WIFI/network engineer so I'm not about to lambast their work. And the technical details are interesting to me still, even if the extent of my knowledge is more messing with home and small business networks, plus a little abstract theory. So the technical details are interesting. When there are relevant technical details to provide, which they were too cagey to offer.
What would have made this interesting, even with all of the closed lips on details, would have been if they were claiming to have solved the 2.4GHz problem. At least there could have been some fun speculation as to whether they were bluffing or had actually found some interesting, novel solution. But after getting nearly halfway through the article, we find out that when 2.4 comes up, the hot air immediately leaves the sails. Instead of declarative statements amounting to "everything will work splendidly for everyone," we get the cagey "less interference," which could amount to basically "business as usual but slightly less bumpy."
This article really could have done with that being more up front (say, in the first few paragraphs), and a little less of them patting themselves on their own backs for what they then admit to being simply a matter of waiting for the right tech to show up to make it practical (there goes nearly a page and a half? since it's not as if they said much of anything relevant). And we'll just wait and see what 5 GHz penetration on mobile devices is really like when this goes live. Granted, I'm sure they're banking on less than 100% usage in either case.
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So what happens when someone decides to bring their laptop and torrent the library of congress?
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lyme":7liree45 said:
Unfortunately there are even more issues to deal with when looking at the transmit power. Not only do you have to adjust the power but during a game it has to be done dynamically as the amount of interference from the people in each section changes (talking in the bowl area especially).
Another fun problem that will cause problems is the people with mifi's or those with their phones running as hotspots for whatever reason.
"That's crazy," you say, "who would do such a thing?"
Out of 70,000 people, there will be a few for whatever reason, causing connectivity issues in spots.
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ATPTourFan":juiqgpyx said:
One of the more interesting parts of the piece, to me. It's possible that the Patriots' iPhone app is more compelling than the Android one, I guess. Alternately, Gillette (and comparable stadia) may have agreements in place with wireless carriers -- the iPhone comes set to autoconnect to AT&T wifi hotspots, so if Gillette is advertising an AT&T SSID, iPhones may be autoconnecting themselves.
mikemosh511":juiqgpyx said:
I hardly think hiring someone to run Cat6 qualifies as "outsourcing." Clearly they're referring to outsourcing design and operation, as Gillette did.
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I'm pretty disappointed to see that they are going unencrypted wide open wifi for the stadium. The amount of credentials that will be harvested from those games is going to be staggering, especially if most mobile applications keep forgetting that SSL exists.
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Oh my god! They screwed up and built the field OUTSIDE of the stadium! Someone is going to get fired...
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they won't need to have 68k people sharing the same spectrum. they can lower the power, add some signal absorbing materials and directional atennas and spread out the APs to be able to use the same channels across the stadium without overlap
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I don't understand why they're supporting 802.11a and b, or even g - are there any phones and tablets that don't support 802.11n? The original iPhone and 3G sure, but they're both over 5 years old.
Agree that saying 5GHz only is a bit of a cop-out, and would like to have heard about which vendors they're considering.
Agree that saying 5GHz only is a bit of a cop-out, and would like to have heard about which vendors they're considering.
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While this was an interesting article from a technology perspective, I fail to see the beauty in staying connected with the world while I'm at a sporting event. Part of the reason for going to a game is to actually see my friends in person, see the game with from my own perspective and to god forbid exert a little energy and yell at the food runners for a bag of peanuts.
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majortom1981@aol.com":1e42njat said:
We don’t get hurricanes in the Bay Area. The worst weather we might get is a really bad rain storm, but nothing tropical or subtropical, so hurricanes are probably not a design consideration.
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Random aside: why does a brand new stadium look so wonky? I mean, it looks more like a 100 year old stadium that has had various augmentations, additions and rebuilds over its lifetime.
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The Ugly":1l1grvtb said:
The issue with big conferences is that a lot of the time they're set-up in places that aren't owned by the conference organizers and the organizers are relying on their share of the pie provided by the hotel/conference center management.
I've been in and out of such server closets and I'm almost always left sad by the experience, but retro-fitting in high-capacity networks is many times more expensive than doing it right from the start. Thumbs-up for thinking ahead and caring about your work and product.
Maybe we should hold conferences at the 49'ers stadium
wkhtl":1l1grvtb said:
Of course math states that works out to just under 16Mbps per device simultaneously to the internet. That's without considering operations overhead.
But then through the use of caching internet proxies and DNS servers they could bring a little more of the data inside their network which would increase the perceived bandwidth by keeping more communications on the LAN.
The majority of video/related apps they are going to be delivering are intended to be run on LAN from end-to-end, which means the level of WAN access available is (intended to be) largely irrelevant. You can easily have 20-40Mbps (2-3Tbps) available over the LAN but still have a network chokepoint/bottleneck at the internet facing gateways that would go largely unnoticed.
---
Interesting note about the open-network for public. While AP and Peer isolation can reduce the risk of someone actively attacking another device, it doesn't stop all of those Wireshark4Android users from scanning and capturing information "on the wire" promiscuously.
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neuromaster":1w741nxw said:Three pages later I'm still wondering what their plan is
Wholly intentional, and I don't blame them. If they pull this off these guys are going to get to repeat this feat to thousands of other stadiums, fields etc. and laugh uncontrollably all the way to the bank.
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(I'm not from USA.)
If this a very popular team, does anyone know why their brand-new stadium would be restricted to just 68,500 seats?
If this a very popular team, does anyone know why their brand-new stadium would be restricted to just 68,500 seats?
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Thank goodness. I can't stand having so sit through a sporting event and not also watch netflix at the same time.
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dtremit":rndi3pyu said:
Since there are also Verizon iphones, I suspect the it is the demographics of the users that are driving the devices.
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To add some color:jbrodkin":1tz0isfp said:
NFL stadiums tend to be built in the 65-85,000 capacity range. The newer stadiums have tended towards the smaller half of that range. There has been more focus on high-paying luxury amenities than in accomodating high capacity.
There are a dozen-or-so big college football [American Football] stadiums that exceed the 85,000 capacity, with half of those over 100,000 capacity.
Including college stadiums, there are about 40-ish American Football stadiums that have higher capacity than the 49ers new stadium.
To put all this in perspective with Association Football, there's about 40-ish Association Football stadiums around the world that have higher capacity than the 49ers new stadium. But there's only a couple that exceed 100,000 capacity. For the English football fans out there, the 49ers new stadium is right in between the capacity of Emirates Stadium (Arsenal; 60,300) and Old Trafford (Manchester United; 75,700).
[I picked English football teams because I figure with a largely American audience on Ars and related to an article about American Football, I would keep to the Association Football teams that I know Americans have generally heard of. The 49ers new stadium is approximately the same size as El Monumental, where Club Atletico River Plate plays in Buenos Aires, but I figured that would provide as much context to most Arsians as it does to me... which is not a lot.]
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Stone":2rmnavpc said:
The real question to be asked is how many people have unlimited bandwidth accounts...
Data usage can get expensive quick, and besides, with this many people accessing mobile towers in a confined space, it is probably a given that a well-designed WiFi network will offer faster throughput.
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karolus":3akdapks said:
I actually looked again to see if this whole thing was a parody. Making such unsubstantiated claims about a yet to be installed network, while still in the midst of design testing, with a recent history of stadiums that are hitting less than 15% of possible fan connections, seems a bit fantastic.
I wonder if anyone will really be paying attention to this article when the rubber hits the road in 2014. I'm betting they will post 8,000 - 10,000 users connected and call it a first in the industry. I'll be watching for that article and bookmarked this one.
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Roger Graham":1x8knhku said:
Space to build, parking, local roads and transportation, etc.
Santa Clara is a built out city with not much room for expansion.
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It's good to see Mr. Garibaldi has returned from Mars. Who knew that air guitar was his other favorite thing in the universe?
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