Meru Networks Deployment Makes D.C. Ballpark First To Offer High-Speed 802.11n Wi-Fi Access in 100% of Park
New 41,000+-seat Nationals Park Gets Wireless Ticket Checking and Point-of-Sale
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Oct. 22, 2008 – Nationals Park, the first ballpark to offer high-performance IEEE 802.11n wireless Internet access to everyone attending Washington Nationals baseball games, has deployed a Meru Networks wireless LAN system as its network infrastructure for stadium operations, guest services and guest Internet access.
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 since the stadium's March 30 opening. With an average per-game attendance of 29,500, the network has supported several million wireless connections to date.
Future plans announced by Nationals team owner Lerner Enterprises call for the network to support "room service"-style food ordering (letting fans use their mobile devices to place orders and have them delivered to their seats), as well as a voice-over-Wi-Fi system for stadium staff, who in times of emergency won't have to rely on a cellular infrastructure taxed to capacity by thousands of game attendees carrying their own phones.
With a seating capacity of 41,888, the state-of-the-art stadium is the first to have:
- ubiquitous Wi-Fi access over 100 percent of the stadium area, with seamless roaming across the entire venue rather than just in skyboxes, press boxes, etc.;
- high-speed 802.11n access throughout the stadium's indoor and outdoor areas for those with 11n-equipped laptops and hand-held devices;
- turnstile-less ticket admittance based on the wireless LAN, with ticket-takers using hand-held mobile devices that communicate wirelessly with a ticketing system database that can instantly check for duplication and fraud.
Jason Zachariah, director of information technology for the Washington Nationals, said, "We made a decision early on that the park's wireless infrastructure would offer an unprecedented range of applications and a fan experience that you couldn't get anywhere else. Wireless has reached a point where it is not only as reliable as wired networks, but there are things you can do with it that couldn't be done at all with wired."
One of those things was the elimination of bulky and complex entrance-management systems.
According to Bob Henley, CEO of Fusion Network Systems, the Columbia, Md., network and infrastructure solutions provider responsible for deploying the Meru Networks wireless LAN, "Ticket takers at the park use lightweight hand-held scanners that send information over the air to a remote database. Ticket forgeries can be instantly detected. A huge advantage of the system is that you can easily move staff around to 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."
802.11n: Wireless Access at Five Times the Speed
The park's selection of 802.11n, the latest, fastest wireless LAN technology, will be a particular boon to members of the press who cover the games. "More than 100 reporters come to any given game, and they're doing real-time searches on players' performance statistics and competing for the best story," Henley said. "With 11n they get what they need at five times the speed of the older 11a/b/g technologies available in most stadiums."
"The challenge for sports facilities such as Nationals Park, where thousands of spectators are likely to be accessing the network simultaneously, is to handle all those users while minimizing or eliminating contention and interference issues," said Stan Schatt, vice president and Wi-Fi research director at ABI Research. "The much greater bandwidth and range of 802.11n, along with its enhanced reliability, make it a great fit for this scenario."
The Technology Behind the Network: "Virtual Cell" Wireless from Meru
"The wireless capabilities offered in Nationals Park require a solid Wi-Fi infrastructure that only Meru Networks' advanced 'virtual cell' technology provides," Henley said. With virtual cells, a single radio channel is automatically selected for use across a venue, with additional channels activated only when more capacity is required. This contrasts with 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.
"Lots of people associate wireless technology with poor roaming and low reliability," Henley said. "Only Meru's single-channel approach addressed our demands for pervasive coverage without gaps or interference. In fact, after we deployed the first 49 of 200 access points, all indoors, we literally had 100 percent coverage of the ballpark – including the outdoor areas. The remaining access points were added not to increase the coverage area but wherever we anticipated a need for greater user capacity. With any other wireless vendor, we would have had to create a complicated channel plan, constantly worrying about whether the placement of any new access points would lead to co-channel interference."
The Nationals Park network uses two Meru access point models. Approximately 175 AP311s, a dual-radio unit with one 802.11n radio and one 802.11a/b/g radio (software-upgradable to 11n), are deployed in the stadium's indoor locations. An additional 25 units of Meru's OAP180 Rugged Access Point are placed outdoors.
About Nationals Park
Nationals Park is located in Southeast Washington, D.C., in the new mixed-used Capitol Riverfront area. The 41,888-seat venue's exterior features an innovative design of steel, glass and pre-cast concrete that uniquely reflects the city's architecture. Concourses and seating decks are configured to create a variety of distinct neighborhoods, each with its own identity and viewing experience. As fans traverse the park's vertical circulation ramps, they witness panoramic views of the riverfront, Navy Yard, surrounding city and landmarks such as the Capitol and the Washington Monument. Nationals Park is equipped with state-of-the-art video and audio technology, including a 4,811-square-foot high-definition scoreboard. The park also features a variety of entertainment and fan-interactive alternatives to ensure a compelling and engaging game entertainment experience.
About Meru Networks
Founded in 2002, Meru Networks provides a virtualized wireless LAN solution that cost-effectively optimizes the enterprise network to deliver the performance, reliability, predictability and operational simplicity of a wired network, with the advantages of mobility. Meru's solution represents an innovative approach to wireless networking that utilizes virtualization technology to create an intelligent and self-monitoring wireless network, and enables enterprises to migrate their business-critical applications from wired networks to wireless networks, and become all-wireless enterprises. Meru's solutions have been adopted in all major industry vertical markets, including Fortune 500 enterprises, healthcare, education, retail, manufacturing, hospitality and government. Meru is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and has operations in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. For more information, visit www.merunetworks.com or call (408) 215-5300. .
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