PDC2008 sets benchmark for Wireless Connectivity

girishr — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 21:30:23 GMT

Many of you who were there at the PDC keynote room might have missed the UFO style devices (in the picture below) from Xirrus. But several of these devices were silently (perhaps a little flashy) and dutifully doing their job in the keynote room.

Pardon my lazy blogging for not saying enough about it at the event as I promised earlier. But this press release from Xirrus will fascinate you.

An industry record was made at PDC as we connected 2,890 concurrent users in a 100,000 square foot keynote hall through Wi-Fi. You can read more on this and the other records that were set by Xirrus here:

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Ultra-High-Density-Wi-Fi/story.aspx?guid=%7B74E21C5A-BA6C-4AD1-BABD-376A3C9AE814%7D

We had over 2,000 connections pretty much during every keynote. With such large number of connections, attendees might have noticed how much bandwidth was eaten up. We didn’t use up the entire bandwidth but were over 90% of the capacity most of the times throughout the week. Hopefully that explains why you were getting a slower connection at times, as it was not just you, but thousands of other people on the same network around you.

Our priority was to make sure nothing catastrophic happens as we also had a backup wireless solution if the high-density solution didn’t work out. Thankfully we didn’t ever have to go to our backup Wi-Fi.

Next stop, we’ll think about scaling out High Density devices throughout the conference center and more bandwidth (of course) to make your conference experience better. Now you have one more reason to attend PDC 2009 and other future Microsoft events. So what are you waiting for?

Wireless at PDC 2008

girishr — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 05:50:00 GMT

Update (10/28 12.30AM): Make sure to use MSFTINET as SSID when connecting to wireless network. It is an open network (does not require key or password).

A few months ago, I “signed up” to be part of the PDC virtual planning team and my role was to take care of wireless (802.11) experience for the several thousand PDC attendees. Given the geeky nature of the audience, it was a challenge that had to be taken very seriously.

So what does it mean for you, the PDC attendees? You can get to the wireless network and browse the internet from most locations within the Los Angeles Convention Center. “Most locations” means that you may not be able to browse from within the restroom :) but you can at common locations like keynote room, internet cafes, lounges, breakout rooms where people congregate.

The keynote room was the biggest puzzle we had to solve. More than ever, many people use their laptops, smart phones and other internet enabled devices these days during conferences. Having several thousand people in one big room and every person using their array of devices, actually pushes the limit of physics to a greater extent.

In order for our attendees to have the best possible wireless experience at keynote, we realized a conventional wireless deployment may not work and we’re trying some innovative hardware and scaling it for “PDC level” experience. Infact, on the keynote this morning, we had more than doubled our usual capacity!!! I’ll blog more about it as the event progresses.

Also don’t forget to check out the mobile PDC experience at http://m.microsoftpdc.com/

Keep browsing!

Girish Raja's Dynamic(s) Thoughts : PDC2008

PDC2008 sets benchmark for Wireless Connectivity

Wireless at PDC 2008