Ruckus Wireless announced that the Indian Wells Tennis
Garden, home of the BNP Paribas Open, has selected and standardized on Ruckus
Smart Wi-Fi to support indoor and outdoor wireless applications from point of
sale and entry/exit ticket scanning to guest access and mobile data offload.
The BNP Paribas Open is the largest ATP World Tour and
WTA combined two-week tennis tournament in the world. Last year, more than
350,000 people attended the BNP Paribas Open, making it the most attended
tennis event in the world outside of the Grand Slams.
The move to offer ubiquitous, high-speed Wi-Fi service by
Indian Wells and other pubic venues such as Balboa Park in San Diego
reflects a major trend in Wi-Fi adoption as a standard public access
service by network operators and public-facing enterprises around the
world.
Sports teams, stadium operators, and stadium vendors view
public-access Wi-Fi as an opportunity to improve the guest experience, better
serve customers, and pursue revenue growth via stadium-specific mobile apps
ranging from food ordering to delivering compelling in-venue video content,
such as replays of a big play or live streaming from a variety of camera
angles, and in the near future, providing interactivity with fans.
“Reliable Wi-Fi services for a diverse set of users
and applications is vital to improving the operation of our facilities and
enhancing the guest experience. We no longer see Wi-Fi as an amenity but rather
as a necessary utility for staff, vendors and guests who need to stay
connected,” said Steve Simon, chief operating officer, Indian Wells Tennis
Garden.
After evaluating Wi-Fi from Cisco, BelAir, Aruba and
Sonic Wall, the Indian Wells Tennis Garden selected and is deploying a unified
Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi indoor and outdoor infrastructure.
For the upcoming BNP Paribas Open (March 5-18, 2012), the
system will provide wireless access to players, officials, coaches and VIPs, as
well as for supporting box office credential scanning and other vendor
services. The facility will also use long-range point-to-multipoint bridges to
extend wireless connectivity to remote will-call ticket operations.
The Indian Wells Tennis Garden is making use of a number
of unique features with the Ruckus system such as smart meshing, dynamic
pre-shared keys, client isolation and dynamic VLAN assignment to improve
wireless network security and simplify deployment.
Unlike other Wi-Fi mesh alternatives, an adaptive antenna
array in each Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi access point (AP) provides longer range and
more reliable wireless links to its neighbor APs by constantly steering
transmissions over the best performing signal paths while mitigating
interference.
With dynamic pre-shared keys, Indian Wells Tennis Garden
can give its corporate users secure access through unique encryption keys that
are generated by the ZoneDirector and automatically provisioned on each user
device without human intervention. With client isolation capability on the
Ruckus ZoneDirector, Indian Wells bolsters network security by prohibiting
users on the open network from seeing each other.
Using dynamic VLANs, the Indian Wells Tennis Garden is able to automatically assign a discrete VLAN to each vendor at the venue
upon authentication. This eliminates significant network configuration chores
typically required to provide vendors with their own segregated Wi-Fi network.
While initially offering limited public access, the
Indian Wells Tennis Garden sees Wi-Fi as an ideal technology for offloading
data traffic from overburdened cellular data networks to improve spectators’ online
experience. Wi-Fi is also viewed as a key technology for supporting future
wireless applications such as IP security cameras, voice over IP communications
and IP-based video streaming.
The Indian Wells Tennis Garden is deploying a high-speed,
dual-band (2.4 and 5GHz) 802.11n wireless environment using Ruckus
ZoneFlex 7363 indoor and 7762 outdoor units controlled by a redundant
centralized ZoneDirector WLAN controller. Ruckus 7731 point-to-point and
point-to-multipoint bridges are being used to extend wireless broadband to
remote locations.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
