Cyrus Hurley considers a case study in which installing a Meraki system alleviated concerns over slow internet for a convention center in North Carolina.

1. HOW MERAKI AND
FIBER OPTICS
SAVED THE SHOW
CYRUS HURLEY

2. If you’ve ever seen a convention center in
full swing, you know it’s a massive
undertaking, a huge, coordinated effort of
dizzying organization, collaboration,
meticulous planning, and a little bit of
prayer that it all goes smoothly.
And yet, all the hard work and
preparation in the world won’t
compensate for poor internet when the
crowds flood in.
A CONVENTION IS A
FEAT OF DETAILED
PLANNING.
SECTION ONE

3. THINK ABOUT IT.
Hundreds of vendors on the floor are hooking up to the internet to
demonstrate their products, run their signage, and offer interactive displays
to visitors. Breakout sessions are running slideshow presentations or video
content, and eager listeners are taking notes on Google docs.
It’s not just the businesses and vendors who are relying on a fast and
faultless connection. Up to 5,000 people who turned up to the event are
whipping out their phones to take pictures, find a vendor’s website, or
browse online while they wait for the next event to begin. Those same 5,000
people are also overloading nearby cell towers, so they can’t rely on 4G
when the internal system fails.
Worse still, vendors are usually charged an internet fee regardless of whether the
system was functioning under the strain or not.

4. WHEN THE INTERNET WENT DOWN AT THE
HICKORY CONVENTION CENTER, THE CENTER
CALLED HITSTECH.
We came over to run a full site discovery, and found that they were
still stuck on DSL at 10 megabytes — not nearly enough for a center
of that size. Their access points were also improperly placed, the
vestiges of an older system. Perhaps worst of all, their in house IT
staff didn’t have any way to look inside the system.
They were charged with an impossible task, on call to keep an
insufficient network running when they themselves were in the
dark without any real insight about what was happening inside the
system.

5. THIS WAS A JOB
FOR FIBER
OPTICS, AND
FOR MERAKI.

6. WE INSTALLED A
MERAKI SYSTEM.
A Meraki system diagnoses the network on the
cloud in real time. Now, when the system isn’t
performing, the IT staff is more than equipped
to respond, thanks to a system that gives them
immediate access to see internet speeds, let’s
them see where on the network people are
congregating, and alerts them when there’s a
system outage.
Meraki demystifies the Center’s own network,
ensuring that once we’ve done our work well,
it’ll run smoothly without us for years to come.

7. We also took great care to create a system that could respond to
the challenges of the environment. In a convention center with
thousands of people, it’s difficult to predict the interference
you might receive. Access points have to be placed strategically
so that they aren’t so close together as to interfere with each
other’s signals, nor so far away that you lose signal when
roaming between them. The fiber optic cable gave them
lightning fast connection speeds and, for the first time, enough
bandwidth to handle the massive demand of thousands of
engaged convention-goers with ease. The new firewall secures
the perimeter of the Convention Center, as well as serving as a
doorway for people inside the network to access the outside,
providing a seamless surfing experience for the user.

8. With a brand new Meraki system, the
Hickory Convention Center is finally
able to live up to its promise of
fantastic events. Vendors are
guaranteed to get their money’s
worth, and convention-goers can
expect a fantastic, frustration-free
experience, every time.

9. THANK YOU
FOR YOUR
TIME.
For more content and the full-
length post this presentation
was based on, visit
CyrusHurley.com