Subject: BCP request: WiFi at High-Tech Meetings

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 07:14:27 -0800

Time for a BCP?

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/29/technology/29wifi.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha25>

> The problem is that Wi-Fi was never intended for large halls and thousands of
> people, many of them bristling with an arsenal of laptops,

I don't recall seeing a document on this and the IETF track record has been 
quite good.

We should share the joy.

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

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From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 10:27:58 -0500

On Dec 29, 2010, at 10:14 AM, Dave CROCKER wrote:

> I don't recall seeing a document on this and the IETF track record has been quite good.

If you remember IETF 64 in Vancouver, there was a painful learning curve along the way...

Regards
Marshall

> _______________________________________________
> Ietf mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
>

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From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 07:57:53 -0800 (PST)

Dave,

I think you will find that our NOC people have a great deal of 
experience and perhaps even a list of do's and don'ts for this type of 
design. In the end, this technology will not scale without bonds if 
we're talking about n-thousand people sitting in a plenary hall, but 
there are obviously a lot that can be done with a distribution of 
multiple lower-powered (configured as such) units that don't use 
overlapping channels, use of various 802.11 flavors (a, n, etc) and 
more SSIDs, all in the name of load sharing.

While there may not be a document, and I agree that it would be useful 
to have one, there is certainly a collective body of knowledge on this
topic (including a "never again use base stations from xxxx..").

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher,  The Internet Protocol Journal
Cisco Systems
Tel: +1 408-527-8972   Mobile: +1 415-370-4628
E-mail: [email-masked]  URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj

On Wed, 29 Dec 2010, Dave CROCKER wrote:

> > The problem is that Wi-Fi was never intended for large halls and 
> > thousands of people, many of them bristling with an arsenal of 
> > laptops,
> 
>

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From: Henning Schulzrinne <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 11:03:52 -0500

I'm curious what the largest *successful* deployment has been (measured in number of participants in a single room/hall/stadium/...) that anybody has seen, within the IETF or beyond. The NYC article hints at the fact that the limit may be hotel fiber, rather than wireless, in some cases. We seem to have more experience with dimensioning those than other organizations.

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From: Xiaoming Fu <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2010 00:27:30 +0800

The best conference WiFi experience I had ever with was the SIGCOMM'07 
conference room in Kyoto International Conference Center 
<http://www.icckyoto.or.jp/> in Kyoto, Japan. It showed nearly no 
service interruption for my laptop. It might be interesting to learn 
from our Japanese colleagues how they managed to make it happen.
Xiaoming

-- 
Prof. Dr. Xiaoming Fu      http://user.informatik.uni-goettingen.de/~fu
Computer Networks Group    http://www.net.informatik.uni-goettingen.de/
Institute of Computer Science, Faculty of Mathematics&  Computer Science
University of Goettingen   E-Mail: [email-masked]
Goldschmidtstr. 7          Tel/Secr: +49-(0)551-39-1720 23/20
37077 Goettingen, Germany  Fax:      +49-(0)551-39-14416

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From: "Richard L. Barnes" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 11:32:34 -0500

Jonny Martin did a nice little lightning talk on the topic at APNIC 29:
<http://meetings.apnic.net/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/19020/Lightning-Talk_09_Jonny-Martin-APRICOT2010-wifi-network.pdf>

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From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 08:38:45 -0800

On 12/29/10 8:03 AM, Henning Schulzrinne wrote:
> I'm curious what the largest *successful* deployment has been
> (measured in number of participants in a single
> room/hall/stadium/...) that anybody has seen, within the IETF or
> beyond. The NYC article hints at the fact that the limit may be hotel
> fiber, rather than wireless, in some cases. We seem to have more
> experience with dimensioning those than other organizations.

hotel facilities range from acceptable to godawful...

The biggest problem by far is cochannel interference, and the best way
to solve that is more channels. The ability to use 802.11a's 11
non-overlapping bands is the move effective method by far. It's doesn't
work if you have to serve 8000 iphones but in a environment full of
business class laptops, more that half your customers will move over
there by default.

joel

>> experience and perhaps even a list of do's and don'ts for this type
>> of design. In the end, this technology will not scale without bonds
>> if we're talking about n-thousand people sitting in a plenary hall,
>> but there are obviously a lot that can be done with a distribution
>> of multiple lower-powered (configured as such) units that don't use
>>  overlapping channels, use of various 802.11 flavors (a, n, etc)
>> and more SSIDs, all in the name of load sharing.
>> 
>> While there may not be a document, and I agree that it would be
>> useful to have one, there is certainly a collective body of
>> knowledge on this topic (including a "never again use base stations
>> from xxxx..").
>> 
>> Ole
>> 
>> Ole J. Jacobsen Editor and Publisher,  The Internet Protocol
>> Journal Cisco Systems Tel: +1 408-527-8972   Mobile: +1
>> 415-370-4628 E-mail: [email-masked]  URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> d/ --
>>> Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net 
>>> _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing
>>> list [email-masked] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
>>> 
>> _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list 
>> [email-masked] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
>> 
> 
> _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list 
> [email-masked] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
>

---

From: Chris Elliott <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 08:55:34 -0800

>> experience with dimensioning those than other organizations.

Our network requirements doc at http://iaoc.ietf.org/network_requirements.html is somewhat relevant.

> hotel facilities range from acceptable to godawful...

The IETF has the luxury of getting donations of high speed connectivity to many of our meetings.

> business class laptops, more that half your customers will move over

I strongly agree here. Encourage .11a (5ghz) usage, disable .11n for the .11b/g 2.4ghz spectrum. We also have the luxury of a large number of repeat attendees, and many of you have learned the benefits of using .11a and will go out of your way to use it. We facilitate that through advertising .11a-only SSID's.

So, yes, some of what we've learned would apply to other events, but some is very tailored to the IETF's needs.

Chris.

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From: David Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 09:52:40 -0800 (PST)

On Wed, 29 Dec 2010, Henning Schulzrinne wrote:

> I'm curious what the largest *successful* deployment has been (measured
> in number of participants in a single room/hall/stadium/...) that
> anybody has seen, within the IETF or beyond. The NYC article hints at
> the fact that the limit may be hotel fiber, rather than wireless, in
> some cases. We seem to have more experience with dimensioning those than
> other organizations.

The Apple WWDC I attended in 2008 had easily double the number of 
participants in one room as have ever attended a single WiFi enabled
IETF ... as an individual I experienced no difficulty being online
from the room.

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From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 11:19:59 -0800

I would suggest having it written by Austria Telecom and WIDE.