Monterey Jazz Festival Streams 10 GB of Data to Over 900 Clients on Outdoor WiFi Network
SAN FRANCISCO – October 4, 2011 – Meraki, the recognized leader in Cloud Networking, today announced that the world-famous 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. Alvarez Technology Group (ATG) deployed and managed the network, providing free high-speed wifi throughout the festival, which took place 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. “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, ATG 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 MJF 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.
Using Meraki for the deployment allowed the ATG team to spend time enjoying the music and 80-degree weather on the Monterey Fairgrounds. “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.”
About Meraki
Meraki is the leader in Cloud Networking. 100% cloud-based from day one, Meraki’s architecture delivers out-of-the-box security, scalability, and management to enterprise networks. Meraki has been deployed in over 18,000 customer networks worldwide, including Stanford University, British Telecom, Burger King, Starbucks, and M.I.T. Meraki was named a visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Wireless LAN, and won Techworld’s Wireless and Mobility Product of the Year. Meraki is located in San Francisco, California, and is funded in part by Sequoia Capital and Google. For more information, visit www.meraki.com.
About Alvarez Technology Group
Alvarez Technology Group (ATG) is an IT services company based in Salinas, California. ATG is a certified Meraki partner that specializes in maintaining and improving the technology investment of small and mid-sized businesses. ATG has built a reputation for excellence and execution by designing cost-effective and efficient technology-based solutions for their clients. For more information, visit www.alvareztg.com.
