Wifi Revolution

Meru Networks (News - Alert) has signed an agreement with Nationals Park, to offer wireless Internet access to people attending Washington Nationals baseball games. The sports facility with a seating capacity of 41,888, has deployed a Meru Networks wireless LAN system as its network infrastructure for stadium operations, guest services and guest Internet access.

 

The stadium opened in March of this year and since then the Meru wireless network has provided Internet access, mobile ticket-scanning and concession point-of-sale transactions for more than 80 home games and events.

 

In the future, Meru wireless networks will support “room service” style food ordering that allows fans to use their mobile devices to place orders and have them delivered to their seats. The network will also support a voice-over-Wi-Fi system for stadium staff.

 

According to Jason Zachariah, Director of Information Technology for the Washington Nationals, made a decision early on that the park's wireless infrastructure would offer an unprecedented range of applications and a fan experience that is not available anywhere else.

 

He noted that wireless has reached a point where it is not only as reliable as wired networks, but there are things people can do with it that couldn't be done at all with wired.

 

The facility made a number of changes to reach their goal including the elimination of bulky and complex entrance-management systems. Ticket takers at the park now use lightweight hand-held scanners that send information over the air to a remote database, informed Bob Henley, CEO of Fusion Network Systems, the Columbia, Md., network and infrastructure solutions provider responsible for deploying the Meru Networks wireless LAN.

 

The system allows instant detection of ticket forgeries and enables staff to easily move around that helps accommodate crowd fluctuations.

 

“If 10 staffers at the north gate are working as fast as they can, but the west gate is at a third of capacity, you just send more people with their scanners to the north gate. With turnstiles or fixed systems to move, that would have been impossible,” he stated.

 

Meru Networks emphasizes that the park's selection of 802.11n, the latest, fastest wireless LAN technology, will especially help members of the press who cover the games. Henley noted that over 100 reporters come to any given game and they’re doing real-time searches on players' performance statistics and competing for the best story. The technology delivers what they need at five times the speed then the older 11a/b/g technologies available in most stadiums.

 

Henry further explained that the wireless capabilities offered in Nationals Park need a solid Wi-Fi infrastructure that only Meru Networks' advanced 'virtual cell' technology provides. Virtual cells allow a single radio channel to be automatically selected for use across a venue and additional channels are activated only when more capacity is required.

 

This approach works better than the “micro cell” approach used by most legacy WLANs, which assigns different channels to adjacent network cells, significantly raising the potential for co-channel interference.

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