I have been working with Peplink routers for a while, but I am just starting in the WiFi world.
Recently, I have been asked to cover 3 football pitches with WiFi for an event with 1000 simultaneous attendees. They will use an app which doesn’t require tons of speed (500 Kbps up / down maximum). This sounds like a fun project, but I am afraid I may screw it, since I have more theoretical than practical knowledge in this types of setups.
I am planning to use 1 x Peplink Balance 310 5G router + 3 x Peplink AP One AX access points, since this is what I own. I did some quick tests in Hamina, which I attach here. The results for 2,4 GHz could be sufficient, but 5 GHz coverage is poor, so I guess I would have to get more APs.
Also, providing internet to such big crowd with just 4G and 5G SIM cards looks like an impossible task, but there is no fixed internet installation there. By doing the math, I guess I will need, at least, 500 or 600 Mbps up / down .
What would you do in a situation like this? Could you please point me in the right direction?
Thanks a lot,
Spread evenly across all three pitches or would the users be concentrated in some specific smaller areas?
Are they seated, standing, mixture?
The nature of the event is also quite important as whilst you have a specific application requirement what else might the network be used for, what else might consume bandwidth on the internet connection?
Are you expecting a 100% use rate of the service, i.e. if you have 1000 people on site will every single one of them connect a device to your network - we call this the “take rate” in capacity planning terms.
Does your figure of 1000 users also include staff, vendors, other people involved with the production of the event that might also need to use the network?
Are there other people you might need to provide services to (wired as well as wireless!) that also might have more significant requirements for connectivity?
All at the same time, as in concurrently and it will always 100% of the time require that amount of bandwidth?
We call this duty cycle and it is important to understand as it can dramatically affect your other calculations.
There is a very significant difference between say 1000 devices all trying to download a file at the same time or stream a video vs 1000 devices doing some interactive task like live voting.
Not sure if you have seen it in Hamina but there is also an option to model human crowd, use it as it will help to simulate the attenuation that 1000 bags of mostly water create… you will find those coverage areas shrink a lot.
Yes, quite a few more I expect.
Ignore all vendors marketing departments where they like to tell you that it is OK to connect 500+ users to a single AP, sure they might connect but I would not expect them to pass much traffic!
You also must consider calculations in terms of radios not access points and unless you are buying certain specific vendors products that means 1x AP = 1x 5GHz radio.
Don’t even consider 2.4GHz for any kind of capacity calculations here, whilst that site looks reasonably remote and probably has a relatively low noise floor in 2.4GHz it will almost certainly not have that when there are 1000 extra people there.
Plan your network as 5GHz only and enable a few 2.4GHz radios if it is actually required.
If we just consider simple maths and that a practical association target (number of devices you want on each radio) is probably going to be ~50-100 here you need 15-20 APs just to meet that target.
In terms of delivering ~500Kbps per client you are also probably going to want to target no more than 50-60 devices per AP to be conservative and give you some headroom in the design.
You might also need to account for choke points in the site (areas where users may congregate in larger numbers) and build in capacity accordingly.
Almost certainly that would be risky, even if you have excellent performance when the site is empty on 4G/5G that does not mean it will still be excellent when there is a crowd present and the 310-5G only provides you two modems built in.
I would likely look at something like a 580X/SDX and bond/balance a few 5G modems and Starlink together, ~4-6 Starlinks would likely give you enough downstream bandwidth and a healthy amount of upstream along with some redundancy, I’d probably then infill that with a number of 4G/5G modems taking SIMs from different networks that are known to be good along with some gentle content filtering and/or traffic shaping to try and control how much bandwidth users have access to for non-essential applications.
Whilst it is a temporary event that site is certainly not temporary, is there any possibility to have fixed connectivity installed as frankly the costs for a “proper” connection in many places in Europe whilst on the face look high are likely still probably reasonable compared to the costs of alternative equipment to deliver the same via other means - I’m guessing you are in Spain? - I have worked with Telefonica and Adamo in the past to deliver fibre to some unusual locations with good results.
Delivering Wi-Fi to 1000 users is not really that many and should be fairly easy - the main challenge I think will be the mounting options available to you and whether using only omni directional APs is really the right solution here - I would say you might need to mix and match a bit…
Peplink is probably still an OK choice, it is a shame they discontinued the old 11ac AP that had the built in directional antenna… myself though I would possibly be considering something more from Ruckus, Cisco or Aruba here as a better option.
I am no fan of Ubiquiti stuff but the new U7 outdoor also might be a reasonable choice here (build in directional antenna) but that is a very new AP and not easy to obtain in Europe at the moment I think, it is also very new and probably has some very new bugs!
Other elements that need consideration outside of your network is what other people invovled with the production might be installing - wireless video TX that uses 5GHz (basically a jammer as far as Wi-Fi is concerned), AV people installing their own APs for control networks (often badly configured equipment that occupies many channels and wastes airtime) and other things like wireless DMX for lighting systems - all of these if installed can / will have detrimental effects on your network and in many cases those people can achieve their end results in other ways (without using 5GHz RF spectrum) - you cannot so getting all parties involved early on and understanding what people are planning to do and what they need to achieve is a very important topic.
Thanks a lot for your detailed reply. I really appreciate it.
One thing is clear: I don’t have the experience, nor the infrastructure to undertake this job. But at least you gave me a few key points to think about, do more tests and study this topic deeper.
It’s a shame that we don’t have companies renting Peplink solutions in Spain. At least to my knowledge.
Hi, other things to consider, from experience, 1000 people often have more than one device, phone, smart watch, Wifi enabled Camera etc. There doesnt seem to be any good information from Peplink on concurrent users on either the APs or Routers just a suggestion about number of recommended users.
Will mentioned noise floor. Using more APs to increase the RF density of your WiFi network ie the more APs the higher the RF density may cause issues with spectrum shortage. There is also some confusion about, that talks about legacy client devices slowing networks down, not all true. Even a WiFi 6 client if its being interferred with will cause conjestion due to retries.
What would be interesting to know is, how well does the peplink controller in the router cope with devices roaming between APs? In this scenario there will be a lot of dynamic client movement arround the venue.
using mobile networks to provide the backhaul is fraught with danger. There will be client devices that are using the 5G masts without using the WiFi you provide so this will affect the routers ability to backhaul. Starlink is good but they will shut your terminals down if they detect anything that affects their network. The only safe backhaul is a fixed fiber connection with low contention ratios.
Thanks a lot, Simon. Those comments are really useful.
I appreciate your recommendation of using fiber for backhaul instead of cellular. We won’t finally do this job, but I am already doing tests regarding reception and roaming between APs.
From playing in this field for quite some time now, things I’ve learned… The hard way… Managing contention (lots of client devices vying for the same channel/link) is better managed using multiple Access points on specific frequencies for your access points…eg channel 1,6,11 for 2.4 and 20MHz channels from 149 to 161 for outdoor and those for indoor use where applicable… One key thing I’ve learned is to ensure you don’t set the AP to the highest power so that every client “hears” the AP beacon… That also cuts down on channel noise… 1000 people is difficult to manage so you require a BW limitation per user on each AP… Whilst many vendors claim 100’s of users per. AP, I’ve found the user experience tapers off after 20-30 users attach to an AP… Remember that channel space is shared between users due the friendly protocol…
The other option that’s been mentioned here is backhaul… Relying on cellular is touchy at best… Once again, you’re sharing a cellular link with the general population that’s attached to that cell tower/s… Making the best of what is available is key… Peplink to me is the smarter solution as it provides a WAN reliability option via bonding… I’ve had starlink + broadband + 5G as a way to improve reliability capacity and redundancy… PS… I’m in Australia. No guarantee broadband is good and in some places even available…The next issue to present itself is going to be the human factor. You have zero control over that thing… And you never know what they bring to a party… I’ve seen a DJI drone just absolutely disrupt the entire wireless bands due to its DSSS and FHSS protocols… I didn’t believe it until I fired up a MAVIC 2 and controller to see what it did to spectrum.
Thank you more to think about. Top and bottom of it is, there isnt enough spectrum in 2.4 and 5.8 GHz spectrums. Many large industrial complexes are starting to use private 5G networks on the 3.5Ghz “citizans band” spectrum on the US and UK.
