Monterey Jazz Festival Streams 10 GB of Data to Over 900 Clients
on Outdoor WiFi Network
This year's Monterey Jazz
Festival completed its first-ever
WiFi-enabled music festival. The
Meraki outdoor 802.11n network
transferred over 10GB of data to the
Monterey Jazz Festival’s 35,000
attendees on September 15-17, 2011.
“People used the WiFi to talk
about the festival on Facebook,
Twitter, Foursquare and other social
media outlets,” said Luis Alvarez*,
President of Alvarez Technology
Group, the WiFi provider. “There
were some cell phone dead zones, so
the public WiFi access helped a
lot.”
“We saw every type of mobile
device you could think of on the
network — iPhones, Androids, iPads,
iPods, and laptops,” added Curtis
Thomas, Director of Managed Services
at Alvarez Technology Group. Using
Meraki’s Client Fingerprinting
capability, it was observed that
iPhones accounted for more
than 50% of the network usage.
Apple devices altogether
made up 73% of the clients
on the network.
In addition to providing free
WiFi for attendees, Monterey Jazz
Festival used the wireless network
to stream high-definition video of
six performances through its website
for the world to watch. Over 4,000
jazz fans watched live streaming
performances from as far away as
Slovakia and Senegal. Some festival
attendees even watched the streaming
video on their mobile devices to see
performances on other stages. The
streaming video was made possible
with Meraki’s outdoor 802.11n MR66
access points, which provided
Internet access to the stages via
mesh networking.
“Setting up the network at the
Monterey Fairgrounds was a
challenging environment due to its
size and obstacles,” said Thomas.
“The
MR66s didn’t have line of sight
visibility, but they connected via
mesh networking without a problem
through the trees. Overall, the
whole solution worked perfectly.”
The deployment included a private
network for the Monterey Jazz
Festival staff and a free public
network for attendees. At one point
in the weekend, Alvarez Technology
Group observed that the public
network was slowing down, so they
instantly opened more bandwidth to
the public network using Meraki’s
Cloud Controller. “The ability to do
that on-the-fly across an entire
campus was amazing,” said Alvarez.
“The cloud was a huge factor in ease
of use and ease of deployment.
Without the cloud controller, it
would have been hugely different.”
The 802.11n access points allowed
Yamaha, an event sponsor, to provide
a unique experience to owners of
Yamaha’s latest player pianos.
Yamaha connected the MJF pianos to
the Internet, which created a
special bridge through Yamaha
software. With this connection, the
Yamaha player piano in your living
room could play the keystrokes the
performers were making. You could
watch video accompaniment online.
“Once
everything was set up, it worked
flawlessly for 3 days,” said
Alvarez.
“It left me some time to see the
shows that I’d otherwise be too busy
to enjoy.”
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* Luis Alvarez also sits on
the jazz festival's board of
directors
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