On Point
When the Minnesota Wild set out to replace its aging Wi-Fi with a new, improved network, it went big. The team doubled the number of access points (APs) within the facility to more than 450.
The challenge, as is often the case with sports arenas, was determining where to place the new Cisco equipment. “We really had to think about the aesthetics and design of the APs, especially in the bowl,” where it’s a challenge to get a signal, explains Jim Ibister, vice president of facility administration for the Wild.
Placing antennas inside handrails would have brought them out of code compliance, so they wound up putting the APs inside the dasher boards, where they shoot the signal back up into the bowl. “They do a great job,” says Ibister. “The signal’s really strong at the top and the bottom.”
They also made sure to place APs at each entrance dedicated to ticket scanning so team personnel wouldn’t have interference or connectivity issues while getting fans into the facility.
Martin Jerome, manager of enterprise networking at CDW, says several venues that went with lower bids from partners that weren’t experienced with stadium and arena Wi-Fi projects have turned to CDW to redo them.
“These venues are extremely complex from a wireless perspective. It takes a tremendous amount of knowledge. And it's not just science,” Jerome says. “There's a lot of art to it.”